The Gigas Plot
by Karpi
Summary: Follow the stories of a gym leader's daughter, a fisherman, and a secret agent as they try to uncover the conspiracy behind Regigigas. When everyone has an ulterior motive, who do you trust?
1. PROLOGUE

I've been planning to do this for some time and finally found the time to write my fanfiction.

I don't really have much to say beforehand, other than that the dark scene in the prologue is not typical of the rest of the story.

Although the two storylines may seem separate now, I trust you there is a connection later.

Also, a review/criticism of any type is greatly appreciated! I don't want the embarrassment of having my thread stagnate with only my posts...

So here we go!

*****

PROLOGUE

"Nia," a tall man with bushy black hair motioned for his twelve year old daughter to come join him, "Why don't you take Turtwig, Piplup, and Chimchar out for some fresh air?"

The young brunette groaned audibly, yet still accepted the three pokeballs that her father picked up off the laboratory table.

"But Dad!" Nia complained. "You know they don't like to play with my other pokemon!"

Mr. Willow sighed, knowing Nia's pleading look all too well. She had learned it from her mother, who Mr. Willow looked across the room to see packing up some old pokedex assembly equipment into a box.

"I promise you we'll have a lab assistant soon," he told his daughter. "But for now I just need you to help out a little bit. Okay?"

Turning on her heel, Nia left the open laboratory area for the small entry room at the front of the building. The starter pokemon could sit on the beach and watch as Horsea and Goldeen trained, she decided.

Unexpectedly, there was a man waiting in the entry room. His black suit contrasted sharply with the stark white walls lining the whole building.

"Excuse me," the man had a low, gruff voice, "can you tell me where Professor Willow and his wife are? I have a few questions."

"Back in there," Nia refrained from adding a commend about her dad's current stress level, instead simply gesturing backwards with her thumb.

As the man walked past, Nia could see gray hair poking out from underneath his black top hat. With a second glance she noticed he was actually much older than he had first appeared. It wasn't until stepping outside that Nia realized the complete oddity of him. Her parents weren't expecting a visitor at all today, and there would be no real reason for someone to ask for her mom either.

Although Nia assured herself that the man was likely just an old family friend, she found herself spying anyway. A pair of light brown eyes peeked through the large window on the west side of her parent's lab, only to find an interesting conversation going on.

"I dolt you we don't know where they are," Mr. Willow's firm voice carried easily through the thin laboratory walls.

This answer apparently did not please the man in the black suit, for his eyes narrowed and he produced a pokeball from a side pocket and released a purple ghost-like pokemon in a flash of red light.

"If you don't tell me where the Ultimate Attack Starter Pokemon are in the next couple seconds, the woman dies."

Nia watched her mother look desperately to the professor, who seemed to be going through a mental crisis.

"I... they..." he stammered. "S-someone else has them."

The man shook his head and pointed toward Mrs. Willow.

"Not good enough. Haunter, use Lick on her!"

The ghost-type vanished and reappeared in front of the woman's face before she could even react. Two disconnected limbs resembling hands held her in place by the shoulders while pokemon's long pink tongue extended to press into her face. As soon as it made contact, Nia's mother let out an earsplitting scream and her body began convulsing for a few seconds until she slumped to the floor.

Nia covered her mouth to conceal her own scream. The wide, unblinking eyes of her mother stared off into space, and Nia knew she was surely dead.

Mr. Willow also cried out in horror, and even the Haunter itself appeared a little startled. The man in the black suit, however, wore a smug expression on his face.

"Last chance," he addressed the sobbing professor. "Tell me where the Ultimate Attack Starters are."

Mr. Willow happened to glance out the window at that moment, and his eyes met the spying ones of his daughter. At this moment it occurred to Nia that the Ultimate Attack Starters, whatever they were, were the ones she had in pokeballs on her belt. Her father then turned to the man with the Haunter.

"I don't know."

Nia took this as her cue to run, and did she ever. She was a good fifty feet away from the lab before the screams of her father reached her ears. Knowing it was only a matter of time before she was the next target, Nia sprinted all the way across the rest of Sandgem Town and down to the beach, tears blurring her vision.

From the belt of her jean shorts, she took Horsea and Goldeen's pokeballs and released the two into the water.

"W-we need to get far away from here... quick!" she told the two, leaping into the water with them.

When Nia was swimming south away from Sandgem Town safely in the wake of her pokemons' Surf attacks, more tears came to her eyes, but it was okay because the water quickly washed them away.

No time to be sorry anyway, she thought.

END PROLOGUE


	2. THE SEALED CHAMBER

CHAPTER 1 - THE SEALED CHAMBER

It took some getting used to, swimming behind a pokemon using Surf, but Vincent had to admit it was efficient. He looked back at the fading shoreline of Slateport City to discover he was making great time. The bony brown fish in front of him seemed to understand, too, that its freedom hinged on whether it accomplished its task well or not.

Vincent had half a mind to question where the Relicanth had come from, but the man he was working for, known only to him as "the man with the black suit," did not appreciate questions.

Most likely it was stolen, just as Vincent himself had needed to steal that poor trainer's Wailord. He felt bad about it, but then again, how else was he supposed to earn money for food?

*****

The beaches of Hoenn were nicer than the ones in Johto, the girl tanning on Slateport beach would admit at least that much. But it still couldn't compare to her homeland. Especially in terms of pokemon trainers. Terri decided that if her dad was able to become a gym leader here, that didn't say much for the strength level of the trainers.

So far, this assumption had been correct, as even her newest capture, Zubat, had been winning battles. Pushovers.

Terri was brought out of her reverie by a splash of water over her head. She looked down the beach, ready to scream at someone. Her gaze fell upon a scrawny boy about her age out treading water behind a large blue jellyfish pokemon.

"Sorry!" he called out. "I didn't mean to splash you that much, but I had to get your attention. Have you seen some guy about my height swim by on a Relicanth?"

The boy waded up to the sand and sat down dejectedly. His Tentacruel laid a stinger on his knee in what was supposed to be a comforting manner, but looked slightly disturbing instead. Terri found herself walking over to him.

The things I do for other people, she thought, trying to pull her soaked hair into a ponytail before remembering she had cut it short for her fourteenth birthday.

"A guy on a Relicanth came by here earlier and stole my Wailord," the swimmer explained. "I'll probably never find him now."

Now that he was sitting on land, Terri decided the boy wasn't bad looking at all. The orange cutoff shirt and ripped jean shorts did nothing to help his appearance, but she saw a certain innocent charm in him.

"I can help you look," Terri blushed while making the offer, "if you have another water pokemon for me to swim behind."

She glanced at his mean-looking Tentacruel, hoping it wouldn't be another one of those. Its presence unnerved her slightly. She had assumed he had a different water pokemon at least.

The boy released another pokemon into the ocean next to Tentacruel that looked unfortunately similar. It was the pokemon's unevolved form, Tentacool.

As long as I get a date out of this, Terri thought, I suppose I will put up with it.

"Well, let's go then!" the boy said in an attempt to be cheerful, diving into the water and resurfacing behind his jellyfish.

"This had better be worth it," Terri mumbled to herself as she also got in.

The current created by Tentacool and Tentacruel carried the two north past Slateport before they were forced to turn east.

"Thanks for helping," the blond boy commented between strokes. "I'm Carter by the way."

"Terri Evans."

Despite Carter's lean arms, he was able to swim much longer than Terri had anticipated, and she felt guilty for making them take rest breaks at every little sandbar they came across. She suspected the conversation the jellyfish had been carrying on was about her wimpiness, in fact. It was during one of these breaks that Carter spotted what appeared to be a cave sticking out of the water.

"You think we should go in?" he asked.

"If this guy is a pokemon thief," Terri reasoned, "that could be where he hides all his stuff."

As they approached the small cave, however, Terri's nerves began to get the better of her.

"Carter, I'm not sure this is a good idea," she spoke quickly and shakily. "What if the guy is dangerous? I mean, I don't even know what a Relicanth is..."

Tentacool exchanged a glance with his evolved form while Carter stifled a laugh. The opening of the cave, a rocky dome protruding above the water, stood right before them.

"It's part rock type with tough outer scales," the fisherman explained. "Definitely slow but with some powerful attacks. Relicanth is rare, so I'll give you that one. I need to get you up on your fish knowledge sometime!"

With that, Carter and his two pokemon swam forward into the dark hole and Terri had no choice but to follow. When her eyes became adjusted to the darkness, she could see there was a rock shelf to climb up on. Eager to be on land again to rest her arms and legs, Terri quickly scrambled up to the top of the rock, only to discover a whole enclosed room before her. Carter retrieved his pokemon into their balls and came up to join her.

At the far end, a figure holding a flashlight was facing the wall.

"It's him!" Carter whispered, accidently giving away their presence.

The shadowy figure turned to face them, and Terri readied a pokeball in her hand for a possible fight. They approached the far end of the cave slowly until the man at the far end gasped.

"You're the Wailord's trainer!" he blurted out. "I... I'm sorry... I swear you can have it back when I'm done here!"

Terri was not one to let her guard down so quickly, but apparently her partner was. Carter just walked right up to the thief to see what he was doing. It appeared the thief was actually no older than either of them, holding a flashlight in one hand and a chart with strange symbols on it in the other.

"I've been translating the runes on the wall here," he shone the flashlight to reveal carvings in the rock wall, "and it says I need both a Relicanth and a Wailord for some purpose... but now I see it also says I need a pokemon with Dig, and I don't have that either."

Rolling her eyes in resentment, Terri released a small green rock creature from the pokeball in her hand. This seemed harmless enough to her, deciding that the thief must be just some crazy treasure hunter.

"Where do you want Larvitar to dig?" she asked.

"Just right here I guess."

"Who are you anyway?" Carter asked him. "I mean, I've met a few treasure hunters before on that abandoned ship near Dewford, but I've never seen you around."

"Well first of all, I'm Vincent," he began, "but I'm not a treas..."

While digging, Larvitar had discovered that the layer of rock was not actually very thick at all and instead gave way to a large underground stream. The small rock pokemon fell forward into the decent-sized hole it had created and plunged into the darkness before the others heard a splash. Terri began screaming for her Larvitar while Carter released his Tentacool into the water below.

"Terri's Larvitar fell into the water down there," he called to it, "see if you can find it."

The red orbs on the jellyfish pokemon's head began to flow, giving off just enough light for it to navigate around. After gauging how far the fall was, Vincent prepared to leap into the hole himself.

"What are you doing?" Terri asked the pale-faced boy incredulously.

"I have to keep going," he said with a look of defeat, "or I won't get paid."

Carter kneeled down and peeked into the darkness where he could see the two orbs of red light coming from his pokemon, along with a third smaller light in the middle.

"It looks like there's enough room for Wailord to fit down there," he commented. "I bet that's what you need him for."

Nodding, Vincent produced a pokeball from his belt and released the large pokemon into the underground stream. It filled up nearly the entire space and Carter hoped that his theory was right and Wailord wouldn't get stuck.

"Don't worry buddy, it's me, Carter," he reassured the massive whale pokemon before it started thrashing around very much. "We're just... exploring here I guess."

He hopped down through Larvitar's hole, landing on the squishy body of Wailord. Vincent soon followed, and Terri, muttering to herself about how Carter better be a romantic, joined them.

As she sat down behind Carter, who was behind the water spout, she found a limp body being flung up from the water into her arms. Realizing it was her Larvitar, Terri quickly returned it to its pokeball.

I hope Larvitar is okay, she thought briefly.

Vincent took a seat behind her as she watched Tentacool inch up the side of Wailord's body and into Carter's arms where he held it.

"Let's move forward I guess," the orange-shirted boy addressed his pokemon.

The underground stream seemed to lead nowhere in Terri's opinion, so she focused instead on the eerie red light given off by Carter's Tentacool.

"I didn't know they could do that," she pointed to the pokemon in Carter's lap.

"He stores up sunlight during the day in order to see at night," the fisherman explained. "Tentacool is a really cool pokemon, you just have to give him a chance."

The current of the underwater stream suddenly began to pick up. A deep, siren-like sound filled the tunnel, which Carter explained was Wailord's voice, and that it was worried. Their little underground river was now a raging stream. Nobody could open their mouth to speak due to the violent spraying water coming off Wailord's front fins. It was therefore in the three trainers' best interest to lie down flat against the whale's body to avoid being thrown off.

Before anyone could react, the tunnel, relatively narrow given the space taken up by Wailord, gave way to a large open area. Tentacool's spheres of light showed a waterfall's crest ahead, to everyone's general horror. Wailord shot straight off the end of the large waterfall and right back onto the front of a second waterfall that faced the first.

Terri looked back at the opposing waterfalls in shock, the experience having updated her definition of fear. In fact, she hadn't even screamed, instead going from "scream mode" to "holding her breath mode."

Upon seeing the river branch off up ahead, Wailord fought against the current and took the path that made a sharp right, landing the group in a pond of totally calm water. Carter retrieved his Wailord and the three trainers breathed a sigh of relief as they waded to a shallow end of the pool where there were more rocks to climb up onto.

"No other pokemon could have cleared that twenty food gap between waterfalls," Vincent said, switching his flashlight back on so Carter could return Tentacool to its pokeball.

Another set of runs were on the far wall. Vincent translated out loud as he got his sopping wet chart back out.

"We sealed these... Regi... pokemon away," he read slowly, "We... feared it. Those with... courage, take these... and open the doors."

Sitting on the ground below were fist-sized chunks of three different substances: a blue crystal, a brown rock, and a shiny gray rock. Vincent stored these away in his backpack, along with the rune chart. Everyone was silent for a moment.

"H-how do we get out?" Terri asked cautiously. "I mean, I thought there would be a way out at the end..."

The trio knew there was no way Wailord could swim upstream back to the start, and thus began frantically searching the room for an exit. Now that the possibility of being trapped was real, it wasn't fun anymore.

"Here!" Carter cried. "In the corner!"

He had discovered a stream of water that flowed into a small hole in the rock wall. Vincent bent over to shine his flashlight in it. When he looked at Carter in confusion afterward, Terri dreaded the words that were going to come out of his mouth.

"It just... ends," he said plainly.

"No!" Terri screamed at him. "It can't be a dead end! Make it go through!"

The three sat down in silence by the dead-end-hole-in-the-wall fora moment, each trying to think what had gone wrong. It was Carter who eventually solved the problem with his knowledge of water pokemon.

"I bet Relicanth would fit in that hole," he said to Vincent. "It has this signature Head Smash move, maybe we need to use that."

Vincent nodded, releasing the bony fish pokemon into the stream. Terri had never been so much in love with Carter as the moment when Relicanth's head busted through the wall and bright sunlight shone in through the hole.

"But how do we get out?" she wondered out loud.

"I think they expected the Dig pokemon to still be alive," Carter grinned mischievously at her.

"That's not funny!" she retorted.

Outside, the Relicanth gave one more good Head Smash, and it appeared the trainers had vastly underestimated the attack's power. They watched on in shock as the entire stone wall before them crumbled away into the ocean. The cave they had started out in was only a few hundred feet away now, straight in front of them.

Traveling on Wailord this time, the trip back to Slateport City was quick. Upon reaching the harbor, Terri and Carter immediately headed south toward the pokemon center.

"I... have to go meet someone," Vincent hesitated. "No hard feelings?"

Carter smiled.

"Nah, it was fun in the end."

*****

The sign read "Pal Park." Nia didn't quite know where this square shaped building would be located on a map, despite having lived in Sinnoh her whole life. All she remembered was swimming for a long ways and then running even farther. That was all she could recall from the day's travel. That, and Horsea's evolution of course.

Nia had seen it coming for weeks, ever since Horsea had mastered the Brine attack. Today the evolution had happened while fending off one of the many Tentacool that had approached them while swimming. In fact, Tentacool was now on Nia's hate list, earning a spot directly below the man who murdered her parents. She was far too tired to deal with emotions concerning him right now though.

"I said, are you okay?" Nia finally noticed the young man who had been watching her stare at the "Pal Park" sign for the past few minutes.

"No, not really," Nia sighed, turning to face the trainer. "I've been looking for a police station all day and I don't know where I am."

The boy laughed, obviously unaware of her situation. Nia realized that under normal circumstances she would have found him attractive.

"You're heading way in the wrong direction for that!" he said. "This is basically the southern bounds of Sinnoh here, no city past here, nothing!"

Nia stared off into the distance, annoyed with herself for having run away to nowhere. She should have just tried to make it east out of Sandgem and through the fields in the beginning, but escaping over the water had for some stupid reason seemed like a better idea.

"I'm finished here," the boy continued. "I can give you a ride to Jubilife City as long as you don't mind riding on a Skarmory with me."

She considered the offer. Either way, she would have to end up in Jubilife City eventually, and this would shorten her trip to about an hour. Plus it avoided going through Sandgem again.

"Okay," Nia told him, hanging her head to let her brown hair cover her face. "I'll fly with you. Thank you very much. My name's Nia."

"Hi Nia, I'm Keith," the tall boy produced a strange yellow pokeball from his backpack.

It soon released a large gray bird pokemon that he climbed onto. Nia stepped up onto the Skarmory's back, taking the hand Keith offered, and they took off.

"So what all did you do at Pal Park?" Nia asked conversationally once they were soaring slowly over the river she had spent the better part of the day in.

"Well," Keith thought for a second, "last week I caught this Skarmory and trained it for a couple days straight. Zangoose learned Psycho Cut while I was using him to train with Skarmory. And yesterday..."

"You've only had this Skarmory for a week?" Nia exclaimed, suddenly feeling unsafe as she glanced down and saw they were well above the treetops.

She gripped the back of Keith's navy blue jacket as an extra safety measure and forced herself to look upward at the sky instead of down.

"Yeah, but he knows what he's doing," Keith reassured her. "We had this flying business taken care of by about the third day. I only had one really bad crash."

Forcing herself to stop listening at that point, Nia gazed now toward the sunset, which really did look pretty. And before she knew it, they were back on the ground again and facing the front doors of the Jubilife Police Station.

"I hope you find what you're looking for," Keith waved her off as he and Skarmory left to go to an undisclosed location.

It then occurred to Nia that not once had he been nosy about why she needed the police. Of course, he also coerced her into riding on a brand new bird pokemon...

She pushed the thought from her head and walked inside the building.

END CHAPTER 1


	3. ISLAND CAVE

CHAPTER 2 - ISLAND CAVE

The calm waters of the pond outside Petalburg Gym reflected the sunburnt face of a tall girl with short brown hair. She idly wondered what kind of pokemon were swimming around beneath the water's surface before mentally slapping herself. She decided that Carter had poisoned her mind.

Groaning, Terri approached the doors to her father's gym. She had been waiting for him to come out for almost two and a half hours now. Zubat had been scrimmaging with Larvitar during this time, and now she returned them to their pokeballs.

Norman Evans took this very moment to exit through the glass double doors. Walking beside him was a man dressed in a black suit with a top hat.

"Hi Terri," Norman greeted cheerfully, then turned to his visitor. "This is my daughter, she's going to compete in the Hoenn League Terri, I would like you to meet Professor Rowan. He's taken over research in Sinnoh in the absence of the Willows."

The man called Rowan nodded in acknowledgement of the girl.

"I have to go meet someone now," he said. "It was nice talking to you, Norman."

Terri watched him walk west and out of town. She then turned to her dad once the other man was out of earshot. The slightly balding man in front of her had sort of a glazed look, as if he had no idea what she was going to say next.

"You kept me waiting two and a half hours," Terri's voice resonated with frustration. "What were you even talking about for that long? No, never mind, I don't care. Can I still have my battle?"

The man pondered her question for a minute.

"You will have to battle one of my gym trainers first," he decided. "I need to see that you've improved first."

_No,_ Terri inwardly commented to herself, _you just want to scout my team._

In a few minutes she stood on one end of the dirt battlefield inside her father's gym, opposite some boy named Jeremy. Terri's father hadn't seen her battle since she got her first pokemon, so using that same pokemon seemed logical so as to give away as little information as possible.

"Go, Slakoth " the gym trainer boy's voice was high pitched like a girl's.

_He's sure a late one to start puberty,_ Terri laughed to herself.

She pulled off the pokeball situated farthest back on her belt. With a mischievous grin at her father, who was apparently spacing out at the moment, Terri released the pokemon inside. It was a small bluish-green toad-like creature with a pink bulb on its back.

"Ivysaur," she commanded, "Vine Whip "

Slakoth's trainer smirked as two long vines snaked across the field to strike the sloth pokemon.

"Slakoth," Jeremy gave it a command at the last possible moment, "use your Solarbeam attack."

This move puzzled Terri. Solarbeam would not help defend against Vine Whip, nor would it do much damage to Ivysaur. Slakoth opened its mouth, and a ball of light formed between its teeth, ignoring the slaps from its opponent's vines as if Solarbeam was the most important thing in the world. The room they were in grew rapidly darker as Slakoth sucked all the light from it, including the overhead ceiling lights. Then the light abruptly vanished as Slakoth apparently swallowed it. Ivysaur's vines whipped around in the sheer darkness of the arena but could not find their target.

"What the hell?" Terri was dumbfounded, having used Ivysaur's Solarbeam many times but never getting this result.

Jeremy giggled his stupid girly laugh.

"Slakoth's Truant ability prevents it from firing off Solarbeam," he gloated. "So it just keeps sucking in sunlight until there's none left Now use Scratch, Slakoth."

The pokemon had obviously memorized where Ivysaur was standing beforehand. Terri heard a cry as her grass type was struck by Slakoth's claws. She wanted to strangle both Jeremy and his pokemon at that moment. How was she supposed to become a top trainer if people kept getting away with garbage like this?

"Start running around in whatever direction you want," Terri told Ivysaur. "If you run into Slakoth, make sure you hit it with Sleep Powder."

It was basically the best they could do given the situation. Nothing happened for a few moments as all that could be heard was the soft slap-slap-slap of Ivysaur running around in the dirt.

"Are we done playing yet?" Jeremy giggled. "Use Shock Wave, Slakoth."

A jet of electricity suddenly burst into sight from the opposing side of the battlefield and soared across to shock Ivysaur.

Of course he has an auto-targeting move, Terri thought bitterly.

*****

"Now block that Horn Attack like we've practiced, Clamperl. Try your Iron Defense "

It was the third day of their training. After the Jubilife City Police Chief had assured Nia that there was nothing malicious about Sinnoh's new Professor Rowan, she had explained her whole story to Keith. He was now helping Nia train her pokemon in case she ever needed to defend herself.

"Switch to Water Pulse, quick " Nia commanded her pokemon.

The orange goldfish halted itself before slamming into Clamperl and instead fired a luminescent ring from its mouth that enveloped its opponent. The clam pokemon was knocked backwards in the water several feet, skidding to a stop at Keith's feet, where he returned the pokemon to its ball.

"Goldeen's Water Pulse attack is getting really strong," he commented. "Maybe in a month or two it could face one of my pokemon besides Clamperl "

Nia rolled her eyes and laughed. Apparently offended, Goldeen leapt out of the small pond it had battled in and jabbed Keith's slightly pudgy stomach several times with its horn. After retrieving her pokemon, the brunette looked at her partner semi-seriously.

"Do you think Seadra would have a chance battling Skarmory?" she asked. "I mean, he's your other new pokemon..."

"Actually," the boy advised, "I think we should work on Goldeen some more. This is probably the last unfrozen pond before we get to Snowpoint City and you won't be able to use her until then."

As it turns out, Snowpoint City was much closer than either of the two had thought. They easily reached the town by mid-day, shivering nonetheless, as the only source of heat had been Nia's Chimchar, who was at a relatively low level.

After warming up in the pokemon center, Keith and Nia ventured outside to discover that there were very few houses in the city. The large tan domed building that was the Snowpoint Gym became easy to distinguish from the row of houses around it.

"I want you to watch my gym battle," Keith looked to his traveling partner. "You haven't seen my strongest pokemon yet, and I want you to pick up some tips from watching."

Nia nodded and trudged through the snow behind him to the front of the gym. Before Keith could walk in, she grabbed his jacket.

"I... I just..." she couldn't come up with the words. "Thanks, I guess. For taking me with you and training me and everything."

The black-haired trainer just grinned at her and walked inside. Nia stood for a moment, trying to take in the events of the last few days. The incident at the lab in Sandgem, the horrible journey to Pal Park, and the idiotic Jubilife Police Department were all weighing heavily on her mind of course, and she had not yet given to mourning. But somehow, the relief at discovering through television that this "Professor Rowan" had left the country, combined with how Keith was protecting her, almost made things alright for the moment. Almost.

Shaking herself from the trance, Nia walked inside and found her way to one of the benches on the side of the gym's battlefield. Keith stood at one end, poised to throw his first pokeball, and a young woman stood at the other end, the most noticeable feature being her poofy blue dress. It seemed very unfitting for such a cold climate. Nia glanced briefly back over to Keith and saw how the sunlight coming through the large windows seemed to make his faint grin look even more handsome than before.

"My first pokemon will be Sneasel," she announced, throwing her pokeball to reveal a cute little pokemon that was mostly black, but with some red appendages sticking out of it.

Keith smirked, the species being familiar to him. He quickly released his first pokemon, which Nia had been unaware that he owned up until this point. It was some sort of blue and yellow dog with a back covered in spikes.

"Manectric, use Take Down," he called to the dog.

The gym leader waited until Manectric had covered about half the field.

"Sneasel," she said, "stop Manectric in its tracks with a Slash attack."

As soon as the skinny black creature began charging toward Manectric, Keith yelled to it, "Stop And switch to Overheat "

Snowpoint's gym leader gasped audibly at this command, knowing it was too late for Sneasel to stop its attack. The ice type leapt forward, claws bared, but Manectric glowed a bright orange and released flames from its body in every direction, burning Sneasel's fur and knocking it to the ground.

"Sneasel " the woman in the blue dress cried out. "Get away from there now Jump back and use Icy Wind "

"Crunch attack," Keith called to his pokemon over the gym leader's voice.

The dog pokemon pounced on Sneasel, clamping its jaws around the tiny pokemon. Then, with a jerk of its head, Manectric sent the pokemon flying across the arena where it skidded to a halt at the young woman's feet. As Sneasel went back to its pokeball with a flash of red light, Keith did the same.

"I won't be using Manectric again in this battle, Candice," he explained, using the challenger's right to switch between battles by forfeiting the pokemon.

Candice, as she was apparently named, nodded and flung another pokeball out onto the field, this time releasing a pokemon Nia was not familiar with.

"I've always believed a Normal type can defeat a Fighting type," Keith grabbed a different pokeball than the one he was going to initially. "Go, Vigoroth"

"Let's make this quick, Medicham," Candice called to her gray and pink humanoid pokemon, "High Jump Kick."

The pokemon dropped its fighting stance and launched itself across the field at a high speed, feet first. Vigoroth looked backward to its trainer for advice on the impending danger.

"Use Rock Tomb, Vigoroth, knock it to the ground."

The ape's reactions were unfortunately a split second too slow. It launched a series of boulders toward Medicham, but the rocks, flying from above, struck the ground where Medicham had just passed. Having mistargeted its defensive attack, Vigoroth could only put up its arms to try and shield the blow from Medicham's legs. There was a loud screeching noise from the ape pokemon as it tumbled backwards along with Medicham.

"Jump backwards and try a Rock Tomb again," Keith called out, concerned for the state of his pokemon.

Vigoroth pulled itself up to a standing position and leapt back to put a few feet inbetween it and Medicham. At such a close range, Rock Tomb couldn't possibly miss again, and Medicham was buried beneath a layer of large round boulders. Seeing this, Keith's confidence returned.

"Smash him with a Focus Punch " he called out, and Vigoroth ran back up to where Rock Tomb had landed, charging up an orange energy in its fist.

The pink fighting pokemon crawled out warily from underneath the rock pile, only to be blasted in the face by a full-force Focus Punch. The impact sent it flying across the battlefield and smashing into the wall next to Nia's head on the sidelines.

"Medicham, return," Candice grimaced when her pokemon did not get back up.

Keith give his muscular pokemon a high five and also returned it to its pokeball. He grinned at the gym leader and sent out his final pokemon. Zangoose came onto the field with teeth and claws bared. Nia had actually seen this particular pokemon before when Keith had used it against an arrogant young trainer they had come across the day before. She was not surprised to find the red and white striped pokemon was Keith's strongest.

"In that case, I choose Abomasnow," Candice gave her opponent a mischievous look, as if he was supposed to be scared by that name.

Being native to the Hoenn region instead of Sinnoh, Keith had never heard of Abomasnow before, and his eyes went wide when the monstrosity came out to face him. It appeared to be a large, deformed snowy tree that was more than twice the size of Zangoose.

"You will probably wish you didn't forfeit your other two pokemon," the ice pokemon's trainer informed Keith. "Abomasnow, Blizzard attack."

"Quick Attack," Keith commanded, knowing that Zangoose was at a disadvantage due to having no distance attacks.

Zangoose leapt forward at high speed and began running on all fours through the vicious snowstorm Abomasnow had whipped up. With an extra burst of speed at the end, Zangoose tackled the yeti pokemon straight on, knocking the wind out of the large pokemon.

"Crush Claw attack while it's still recovering " Keith shouted out.

Abomasnow let out a roar as Zangoose slashed at its side before it could even react. Having battled with the ferret pokemon since he first became a trainer, Keith could see that the Blizzard attack had caused more damage than his pokemon was letting on to.

"One good Wood Hammer should finish this battle, you can do it Abomasnow "

Khrondai waited till the green and white pokemon was directly above Zangoose.

"Endeavor " he shouted, noting Candice's expression of horror at the choice of attack.

In a flash of black energy, Abomasnow was on the ground in a split second and Zangoose was standing over it, an exact reversal of their previous position. The striped pokemon unleashed another Crush Claw attack, and it was over.

*****

"The Gym Leader of Petalburg has graciously told me that this place corresponds to your blue crystal," the man in the black suit looked expectantly at the skinny brown-haired boy in front of him.

Setting down his backpack in the sand, Vincent dug out the sheet of paper he had written on. He walked along the sandbar past the man he was working for before stopping at one side of the large domed rock they had been inspecting.

"The blue crystal said East," he pointed to the correct side of the rock formation. "So I guess we break through here."

The man solemnly nodded and beckoned to his pokemon that had been waiting in the water. Vincent had not gotten a proper look at this creature while they were swimming, so he was amused by the appearance of the large three-eyed blue snail.

"Gastrodon, use Headbutt."

The snail-like pokemon smashed its head into the side of the rock dome, creating a hole big enough for a person to squeeze through. Vincent shone his flashlight experimentally into the darkness to discover they were going to be entering some sort of tunnel that went forward a few feet before curving downward into the earth.

"Well," the middle-aged man said, "get in there. I'll follow you."

_If only I wasn't forced to work for this guy,_ Vincent wished for a better life as he stepped forward into the darkness.

A second light switched on behind Vincent as the man in the black suit brought forth another flashlight.

"These walls are very brittle stone," he commented, looking all around. "If we had dug through the wall in the wrong place the whole tunnel would have collapsed "

This particular knowledge did not make Vincent any more comfortable in the cave at all. He took a deep breath and proceeded forward with a cautionary hand held out in front of his head. The rock tunnel seemed to spiral around counterclockwise as it plunged deeper into the ground.

_And under the ocean,_ Vincent thought nervously, looking at the condensation on the tunnel walls.

As the journey wore on, the water droplets on the walls and ceiling became ice crystals, and both Vincent and the man following him were physically shaking from the cold. Just when Vincent thought he could bear it no longer, the tunnel ended in a large circular room.

This chamber had large spires of ice streaking from the floor and ceiling in almost every direction. The very second Vincent stepped into the room, a cross-shaped formation of yellow dots began glowing brightly in the center of what had appeared to be an ice formation. Another second and a sizable chunk of the frozen material surrounding the yellow dots had detached itself and began walking over to presumably attack the intruders.

Vincent cowered behind a particularly large ice stalagmite, while the man in the black suit shone his light down to his belt to remove a purple and yellow ball from it. Vincent vaguely remembered having heard about the Master Ball before but had never actually seen one to confirm its existence. He stared at it, mostly because the only other thing to see was the cluster of yellow lights representing the ice monster that was going to kill them.

With an expert's aim, the Master Ball was flung to hit dead center on the ice creature, trapping the monstrosity inside. When the man in the black suit calmly walked over to claim his prize, Vincent could only think of how anticlimactic that had been. He was filled with a sense of disappointment as they eventually retraced their steps through the dark tunnel and resurfaced onto the warm sandbar.

"Next up we go to the desert next to Mt. Chimney," the man informed him as the two prepared to swim back to Petalburg City with the aid of Gastrodon and Relicanth. "We will even make a short stop in Mauville for you."

*****

Terri stumbled dejectedly out of the Petalburg Gym, having suffered an embarrassing defeat at the hands of one of her father's gym trainers. The frustrating part was how the room with the battle arena conveniently had no windows to let light in. She would have won anywhere else.

She then realized that her father probably used this exact same strategy, so she needed to find a way to beat it anyway. After making a plan to ask around among the trainers at the pokemon center, Terri hoped that she could learn some things her father had had trouble battling against.

Seeing a familiar face had suddenly put an end to all thoughts Terri might have had while walking down to the pokemon center. The Professor Rowan she had met earlier was entering through the center's glass doors while talking to the brown-haired boy from last week on her little cave adventure. Terri struggled to remember his name. Vincent, that was it!

_He did say he worked for someone,_ she remembered. _Maybe Rowan is the treasure hunter._

Terri pushed the thought from her mind and handed Ivysaur's pokeball to Nurse Joy inside. Sitting down in the lobby's waiting area, she saw that Professor Rowan and Vincent were already getting their pokemon back from the nurse. They had paid for the express healing service for some reason.

A very unwelcome presence entered the pokemon center before Terri could ponder Rowan's behavior. She recognized the gym trainer she had lost to and proceeded to glare at the back of his head from behind a magazine. Unfortunately, Jeremy seemed to be looking specifically for her, and Terri was unable to hide for very long given the few people in the pokemon center at the moment.

"Come with me," he said to her hurriedly. "There's something wrong with your dad "

Her heart leaping into her mouth, Terri sprang up and followed the skinny boy out of the pokemon center. Racing back to the gym, a variety of horrors played out in her head. There was, of course, the history of heart disease plaguing their family, but it could have been a number of other things.  
Jeremy led her all the way through the gym back to the damned windowless room, where Norman was pacing back and forth.

"He just won't respond to anything at all," the boy explained. "It started a little after you left."

"Dad!" Terri shouted out experimentally, but received no response.

After debating whether this was actually her problem or not, Terri approached the pacing man. He had a distracted look on his face and seemed not to notice her. The situation seemed oddly familiar to Terri.

"A Hypnosis attack?" she said incredulously to herself.

Releasing Zubat into the room, the gym leader's daughter explained to Jeremy, "In Johto we have these pokemon called Drowzee, and a trainer's hypnotized Ivysaur once. After a while, Ivysaur ended up just like this and I had to shock her out of it. So cover your ears."

The gym trainer, whose red uniform was amusingly similar to Norman's, nodded and clasped both hands over his ears.

After doing the same, Terri commanded, "Zubat, use Supersonic!"

Something must have occurred to Jeremy at the last moment, for he squeaked at Zubat to wait, but it was already too late to stop the blue bat pokemon. A horrible screeching sound filled the room, and Terri got a minor headache despite her precautions. A second horrible metallic grinding noise accompanied the Supersonic, but Terri thought nothing of it, focusing on how the attack made her dad collapse on the ground.

_That's for making us move,_ Terri laughed bitterly, signaling her pokemon to stop.

"Ugh," the gym leader groaned, sitting up to look at Terri's Zubat with contempt. "Where did you learn to stop Hypnosis like that, Terri?"

"It really was Hypnosis then?" she questioned. "What happened?"

"Professor Rowan," he grimaced, "is a strange man. His Haunter used Hypnosis on me and... I was forced to tell him where the Regi legend says the legendary pokemons' locations are... I don't know why he felt the need to Hypnotize me for that, but..."

"The legend?" Terri interrupted, her thoughts drawn back to the inscription in the underwater cave. "Does it tell what the Regi pokemon are?"

Although Terri seriously doubted he was following their conversation, Jeremy was seated on the ground a few feet away, listening intently. Norman appeared annoyed by the two teenagers' interest.

"Yes, Regice, Regirock, and Registeel," he said. "They were supposedly trapped in caves throughout Hoenn thousands of years ago by the people that lived here. It's all utter nonsense, of course. I have no idea why Rowan was interested."

_He hired Vincent to go find those rocks,_ Terri tried to make sense of the information, _and now he's going to capture the Regi pokemon? Maybe, but something's still missing._

"Is there a cave around here?" she asked.

"Right off the coast," Terri's father rolled his eyes. "What a stupid tourist attraction. There is also a cave in the desert north of Mauville City, and another one west of Lilycove."

Terri contemplated trying to intercept Professor Rowan and Vincent at the next cave, but struggled to think of what she could do upon meeting them. Something to get revenge for hypnotizing her father. Set a trap at the next cave possibly. Better yet, she could follow them inside and capture the Regi pokemon at the crucial moment when it's been sufficiently weakened!

Outside again, Terri dialed the number of her boyfriend (or at least she liked to think of him that way). She held the neon pink cell phone up to her ear.

"Hi Carter!" she said cheerfully. "Can you meet me in Slateport the day after tomorrow? ... Yeah, sounds good... Well, it's an interesting story, I'll explain when I get there... Okay, bye!"

END CHAPTER TWO

So, tell me what you think!  
(PLEASE! I want replies!)

Also, for anyone curious, Fisherman Carter is a real in-game character! He's south of Slateport Beach and was the closest guy I could find that had a Wailmer


	4. DESERT RUINS

CHAPTER 3 - ANCIENT RUINS

"He's still following us," Terri mumbled uncomfortably to her friend.

Carter nodded. They looked backwards to see a skinny black-haired boy in the road, who took this opportunity to wave at the pair. Carter looked pleadingly at his glaring partner, and who knew what he was about to do.

"Hey, Jeremy!" Carter called. "If you're so determined to follow us, then just come up here."

They had been traveling all morning, after all, only making a quick stop at the Pokemart in Mauville City to buy some Ultra Balls. As Jeremy approached, Terri began to wonder if Carter was sticking around because he liked her, or because he was just nice to strangers.

"I just want to see one of the Regi pokemon," Jeremy explained his mission in that high-pitched voice of his. "I've heard the stories ever since I was little and to see Regirock in real life would be so cool!"

Carter and Jeremy looked to the north to find that their friend in the navy blue tank top had never actually stopped walking to greet the newcomer. The fisherman was about to run to catch up with her, but Jeremy held him back.

"I know how to completely shock Terri," he said, winking at the boy before taking off after the girl at a skip.

Carter shrugged and jogged behind him until Terri was close.

"Now I have something to show you guys," Jeremy said proudly, eliciting a groan from Terri.

She looked up at the cliff walls on either side of her, noting with defeat that there was really no way to escape from this nightmare. A sudden bright flash drew Terri's attention back to the spot where Jeremy had been standing. When her eyes could focus again, she could see that Jeremy was no longer there. In his place was a girl with long black hair with some sort of odd floating pokemon next to her that resembled a mirror.

"Surprise!" the unknown girl said in the same voice that Jeremy had.

The other two trainers just stared on, not sure how to react to the situation. When it became apparent that neither one was going to figure out her revelation, the girl sighed and explained.

"This is my pokemon Bronzor," she said, "and it has the attack Reflect, which normally would bend light waves in order to reduce damage done to it in battle. But with a little training like I have done, Bronzor can bend the light waves in certain special ways to create an illusion. I've been disguising myself as a gym trainer named Jeremy for the last month or so!"

Terri gained an immediate distrust of the girl. If she had been so easily fooled by this disguise, the girl could be hiding other secrets as well. She could have some ulterior motive for wanting to see Regirock. Her thoughts were interrupted by a loud, hearty laugh from Carter.

"That's hilarious!" he grinned at the girl. "Who are you really, then?"

"My real name is Elea," she said. "The Trick Master lives in my hometown of Slateport, and he showed me the Reflect trick. He's basically my idol."

If such a complex magic trick was so easily given away, Terri wanted to know exactly what other illusions the Trick Master himself had known of.

"Can we just keep going?" she tried to end the awkward situation. "I can see the desert ahead."

She noticed with resignation that Carter had chosen to walk next to this Elea girl now. The strange reflective psychic pokemon floated around lazily in between them.

If she wasn't so pretty then he wouldn't give her the time of day, Terri convinced herself. It doesn't help that she's wearing a miniskirt. That's almost cheating when it comes to attracting boys!

Yet another surprise came to the Johto native as the group reached the edge of the desert. Some sort of sandstorm covered the entire area, making it impossible to see once a trainer entered.

"How are we supposed to find anything in there?" she asked.

Carter and Elea looked at her like she was stupid.

"You didn't know this was here?" the dark-haired girl asked. "Everyone knows that a sandstorm covers the desert region."

With a flash of red light, Terri saw the pokemon that had creeped her out previously. Carter was now holding a familiar blue jellyfish pokemon in his arms. He walked out into the swirling mass of sand and dirt, only to be surrounded by a small halo of water falling from the sky. It served to beat down the wind around him and provided a small amount of visibility.

"Tentacool's Rain Dance attack should let us get through here well enough," he smiled at having solved the problem.

As the two girls joined him, getting soaked in the process, Terri noticed how Elea was conveniently wearing a white t-shirt. What a flirt.

*****

Vincent looked around in dismay as a blinding sandstorm prevented him from seeing anything at all. He tried squinting his eyes to see, but it was no use and little particles of dirt still blew into his eyes.

"This is what I get for not growing up in Hoenn, I suppose," he heard Rowan shout a few feet away. "I couldn't have imagined that this stupid little obstacle covered the desert!"

There was honestly nothing Vincent could do except stick close to the man and hope they came across the giveaway domed rock soon. He had assumed Rowan knew about the sandstorm and had a plan to counteract it, but apparently not.

This was going to be a lot more difficult than Regice's capture had been, he decided. But they essentially had all the time in the world. No one else would be attempting to open the cave of Regirock.

By pure chance, they managed to stumble upon a young boy who seemed to have a pokemon with him, although Vincent could not see either for the life of him.

"You guys were stupid for coming here without goggles," the boy said bluntly.

"Goggles?" Rowan asked the boy, who couldn't have been more than seven or eight by the sound of his voice. "Where did you buy goggles?"

Vincent smiled to himself as he knew the boy's answer before it even came.

"We live in a country that's half ocean. Go figure."

At this point Rowan took out a pokeball from the jacket of his suit and released the familiar blue snail.

"Gastrodon," he commanded, "use Headbutt on the little boy if he won't give up his goggles."

And of course the threat worked. The middle aged man triumphantly put the goggles on his face while the little boy ran away crying. Vincent was reminded of how his older sister used to pick on him before she left home to become a pokemon trainer. She had gotten out while she could, that lucky girl.

"I can see much better now that I don't have to squint," Rowan commented. "We should be able to find the ruins now."

Both men were silent. They really didn't have much to talk about anyway.

*****

As the trio of pokemon trainers carried on in their slow-moving journey through the desert, the collective mood had worsened due to Terri's complaining. Her legs were tired, just as they had been from swimming, and she was sick of the wet sand and mud that was plastered to her body as a result of Tentacool's rain combined with the natural wind.

Elea didn't seem to be much better off, but she had taken the silent pouting route as opposed to Terri's loud mouth. The girl's Bronzor, on the other hand, was floating along next to Carter, who seemed to actually be talking to his Tentacool.

"After this, the next cave we check out is up north," he addressed the two pokemon. "I'm so excited to fish up there! It's prime Feebas territory, you know."

The flat blue levitating pokemon made a screeching noise and turned to Elea, who was shivering. She nodded, somehow able to figure out what it wanted to say.

"We saw a Feebas once," she told the fisherman. "There was this gym leader that visited Slateport last year that had one."

Carter's eyes widened in shock. Both girls thought, judging by his serious expression, that he had something extremely important to say next.

"You saw Wallace," he informed Elea. "He is basically the water pokemon master, and I really want to meet him someday!"

Rolling her eyes, Terri pushed the wet hair out of her eyes and resumed looking for their cave. This time, at the edge of her field of visibility, was a faint domed structure, and she wasted no time in making sure they went that direction. Up close, it was apparent that there was no entrance into the large boulder.

"This has to be the right place though," Terri said adamantly. "We've looked everywhere in this desert."

"If there was an obvious way to get in," Carter reasoned, "someone would have captured Regirock a long time ago. I bet we have to break through the side."

A familiar green dinosaur pokemon appeared at Terri's feet as she summoned it.

"We need you to dig into the side of this rock wall," she knelt down to speak to it, then remembered its last digging experience, "...cautiously!"

Terri glanced triumphantly at her traveling partners as Larvitar began scraping its claws to bore into the rock.

See, she thought, I can have a bond with my pokemon too. Just as good as Tentacool or Bronzor!

As probably should have been expected, judging by the consequences of Dig in the underwater cave, the entire dome of rock collapsed once the small dinosaur pokemon cracked into the inner chamber. Terri screamed, watching her pokemon get instantly buried under many layers of stone rubble.

Elea was just about to ask what they were supposed to do now when the blinding sandstorm that surrounded them suddenly quit. A quick glance to their north revealed that the winds had stopped blowing over the entire desert region as well. In confusion, Carter returned Tentacool to its pokeball, as its services were no longer needed.

"Larvitar!" Terri screamed at the small mountain before them. "Can you hear me?"

A deep rumbling noise from seemingly within the earth itself was enough to silence her.

*****

Vincent and Rowan exchanged a look of bewilderment when they could suddenly see clearly for no apparent reason. The former whirlwind of dust started to settle down upon them like a blanket, and when it did, the location of Regirock's cave became easily identifiable.

It was right off to Vincent's left, and he was sure they were just over there, but then again they could have easily been turned around in the sandstorm. What shocked him was that the domed rock seemed to have crumbled away.

"They destroyed it!" Rowan was angry. "Those damn kids dug into the wrong side of the wall!"

The pair quickly darted over to where three pokemon trainers were standing, staring at the pile of rubble. Vincent recognized Terri and Carter as the ones who had helped him back in the Sealed Chamber, but he didn't know the third girl, or recognize her floating reflective pokemon. He supposed they had been inspired by their previous little adventure into searching for the actual Regi pokemon themselves.

A bass-pitched rumbling noise seemed to come from within the rock pile, and without warning the large boulders suddenly began levitating. These were promptly thrown off to the side, exposing an oblong blue spiky pokemon laying on the ground.

"Pupitar!" Terri cried out, rushing to it. "You evolved to save yourself!"

A much more foreboding presence was in the center of the cleared area. A tall stone figure, mostly tan with hints of orange in the rock, stood perfectly still for a moment as the dust settled. Rowan smirked at this point, taking another Master Ball from the pocket in his suit.

Then without warning, an H-shaped pattern of orange lights appeared on the statue's head as it was awakened fully. Raising two jagged limbs, it shot forth a smaller-scale Sandstorm attack that blasted all five humans back several feet flying end over end. The dense Pupitar, however, was able to weather the attack and stood its ground.

"Take Down!" its trainer shrieked and the coccoon pokemon wasted no time in hurling itself toward the menacing creature.

With a grumble, the rock monster swatted at Pupitar with one of its arms, sending the pokemon flying. Regirock's defenses were obviously too high for regular pokemon attacks to harm it.

"Give me one of the Ultra Balls," Elea quickly motioned for Terri to toss her one. "Bronzor, Reflect!"

The blue capsule in hand, Elea and her psychic type seemed to vanish into thin air. It was a crazy stunt, but it was the only hope of capturing this legendary pokemon. The man in the black suit, who had been standing back till this point, must have realized what the girl was trying to attempt, for he cried out desperately.

"No!" Rowan screamed, chucking the Master Ball in Regirock's direction.

The purple sphere seemed to stop in midair as some invisible force caught it. Elea was about to put the ball in her pocket, but then it occurred to her that she could just capture the legendary pokemon in it and still claim it as her own. She aimed the Master Ball correctly this time and the large rock monster vanished inside instantly.

"Give me the pokeball," Rowan instructed the invisible girl, "or your friend dies."

The middle aged man sent out a purple ghost pokemon, who hovered menacingly above Carter's head. The Haunter's tongue hung lazily out of the side of its mouth as if waiting to use its deadly Lick attack at any moment. The two detached hands held the young trainer in place by his shoulders.

There was a sigh from the area where Regirock had once stood, and Elea reappeared with her Bronzor.

"You can have it," she said, "if you tell me why you want to capture all the Regi pokemon."

The man in the black suit rolled his eyes and turned to look at her.

"It doesn't work like that," he growled. "I don't have to tell you anything. Someday, when I am the ruler of both Hoenn and Sinnoh, you may figure it out yourself, but I won't be giving away any hints. Now hand over the pokeball if you want this boy to live."

And of course she was going to obey him. Rowan smiled cruelly as he pocketed the ball that held Regirock next to the one holding Regice. He then looked to Vincent.

"You were a great deal of help to me in translating," he said, "but now your mission is done. I recommend you go home and take care of the situation you have there."

With that comment, the man and his Haunter turned and walked off until they were out of sight in the now-calm desert.

*****

It was the mutual agreement for Terri, Carter, and Elea to continue on and try to catch the final Regi pokemon before Rowan could. They had rented a room in the pokemon center to stay the night, planning to turn in early in order to get up before sunrise to make some progress toward Lilycove City. Wanting to make sure that they had enough supplies to make the trip, Carter left to go check out the Pokemart.

His hand hovered briefly over a box of Repels before realizing that most of their trip would be on the ocean, and wild pokemon never dared to bother a Wailord. That was assuming the girls agreed to his suggested route, which he was sure they would. He eventually settled on a dozen Hyper Potions and exited the store after paying.

In the row of houses to his immediate south, Carter spotted a boy sitting on the curb by himself and immediately recognized the face. As he approached the old, run-down house, it became apparent that the boy was actually crying.

"Vincent?" he asked, "are you okay?"

The brown-haired boy looked up at his visitor quickly, as if ashamed for someone to see him at the moment.

"My parents," he explained. "They're... gambling addicts, and we were in a lot of debt. T-that's why I had to work for... R-Rowan. He paid me today, b-but they had to go and spend all that ****ing money at the Game Corner."

Carter sat down beside him. He had lived a pretty easy life in comparison to Vincent, it seemed. But he did know a couple important things to say.

"That shouldn't be your problem," Carter said. "You need to get out of this place, Vincent, for good."

The boy shook his head, staring downward again.

"I wouldn't make it as a pokemon trainer," he said. "I-I... I'm not good enough... I don't even have any pokemon..."

Carter walked away at this point, and Vincent sat in silence for a few minutes. He then noticed the small red-and-white sphere that the fisherman had left by his side.

END CHAPTER THREE

Okay, in retrospect the goggles scene was awkward and doesn't really make sense how they would let you see better... but hey, it works in the games!


	5. ANCIENT TOMB

CHAPTER FOUR - ANCIENT TOMB

Now that Captain Stern's prized Relicanth had been mysteriously returned, a sign was posted in Slateport Harbor promising the return of the ferry service soon. Unfortunately for Terri, Carter, and Elea, they didn't have the time to wait on "soon." This is how Terri found herself reluctantly spending the day on the back of Carter's Wailord, following the exact path of the S.S. Tidal.

"Are you sure this is faster to go all the way around to Lilycove?" she asked, staring down at the moving water.

"Yes!" her two traveling companions immediately responded together.

Elea was the one to offer an explanation.

"That forest we're avoiding is so wet and miserable and confusing," she said. "Plus Wailord is making great time."

A grumble came from the rubbery blue surface they were sitting on. Judging by Carter's smile, this was evidently a positive response to Elea's comment.

Off in the distance to the south, a small sandbar with a cave on it was visible. That was where it had all started.

If Terri hadn't taken pity on Carter, or thought him attractive, the latter mostly, she wouldn't have been drug into this situation. But then she wouldn't have the opportunity to catch a legendary pokemon either. The brunette pondered this, staring out into the horizon.

I should at least get something out of this, Terri thought. If I could capture Registeel, I would be unstoppable in the Hoenn League!

If Terri actually did win the Hoenn League, she was sure her dad would finally realize that she can take care of herself. That meant she could finally go back to Johto! All the people she missed, there were too many to count.

She had to somehow make sure that the other two wouldn't be the ones to capture it. Carter was probably ten times more interested in pretty girls than in powerful pokemon. In fact, Terri didn't think he was even an official trainer, he wouldn't have any desire for the non-water type Registeel. Elea, though, she had to have an ulterior motive. Nobody disguises themselves for fun and then conveniently shows up to see a legendary pokemon.

"I heard there's an island around here with Wynaut on it," Elea was talking to Carter. "I've always wanted one. There's more to Wynaut than meets the eye, you know!"

What a very fitting pokemon for you, then, Terri thought bitterly.

*****

"Oh, Keith, can we check out the temple? Pleeeease?"

The trainer sighed. What was he to deny Nia this little detour? They weren't in any kind of a hurry. The girl excitedly pulled him by his hand up the snow-covered steps to the old stone building. The lack of footprints suggested that this was a rarely visited place.

And for good reason. Nia and Keith absolutely could not find any sort of door that would lead inside.

"Maybe the point is that you're supposed to pray outside," the young man suggested.

"Yeah," Nia agreed, "but pray to what?"

It was almost a peaceful moment, just standing there in front of the temple. They were alone, of course, as Snowpoint City was far from a tourist attraction and the residents were all at work. It was almost enough to make Nia forget the constant state of fear she had been living in. Keith put his arm around her waist, and she relaxed into his warm body.

"Wait! There's writing!"

Keith following where Nia was pointing and sure enough, there was something scrawled into the stone at the very base of the wall. Brushing away the light layer of snow, Nia tried to read it off.

"It's in some ancient language," she announced after a moment. "It's all sets of these runes."

Bending down next to Nia to confirm this, Keith said, "I bet someone has translated it before. I mean, it's a big mysterious building, someone had to be curious."

"I think we should go talk to Candice," Nia announced. "The town's gym leader would surely know something like that, right?"

Keith wasn't sure if he actually cared that much to find out what the building was for. But it seemed to give Nia something to focus on, and that made it all worth it.

*****

Rowan let out another string of curse words as he almost tripped over another Shroomish. He kicked the stupid mushroom pokemon away, realizing all too late that Shroomish commonly possessed the powerful Spore move. Making a mental note to catch the next one he came across, Rowan continued stumbling around in the dense forest east of Mauville.

It had seemed like the obvious move to take the most direct path to Registeel's supposed chamber, but in hindsight some sort of water route may have served him better.

Rowan mentally slapped himself as he once again saw the consequences of poor planning. A much smarter man would have made the trip to Hoenn months ago to scout out the best possible path between all his destinations.

But this was better than the sandstorm. He had almost lost Regirock to that group of stupid kids.

Actually, Rowan amended to himself, not really. That thing would have killed them.

"Haunter," he commanded, releasing the ghost pokemon into the air before him, "go above the trees and try and see if there's some kind of road I'm missing... or a river... or anything really."

He watched the purple pokemon phase through the branches in its way and vanish. It eventually reappeared out of the ground behind Rowan, grabbing the man's ankle in what was supposed to be a joke.

"I do have two other pokemon," Rowan warned, not amused in the slightest. "I won't hesitate to have them attack you. Now did you find anything?"

Haunter nodded solemnly and started off to Rowan's right. Following his pokemon, the man eventually came upon a wide river, which caused him to smile slightly. This turn of events pleased him greatly.

"Are you lost, sir?" a voice reached his ears.

Rowan turned his head to see a wooden bridge not far away, with a girl standing by it. Approaching them, he hoped that she was some sort of guide.

"Can you point me in the direction of the tomb where Registeel is said to be?"

The girl stared at him for a second as if trying to determine whether or not he was being serious. She then burst out laughing. Upon seeing the man in the black suit's fixed stare at her, the girl regained her composure.

"I caught my Gloom at the place where the legend says Registeel lives," she said. "Let me tell you, it's a loooooong ways from here!"

She sat down on the ground to begin drawing a crude map in the dirt. During this time, Rowan contemplated on whether he should let Haunter eat her soul or not.

*****

The afternoon found two trainers, one thin girl and her healthy-sized male companion, staring at a book they had borrowed from Snowpoint's gym leader. Candice had cheerfully given away her book on translating ancient runes, the topic being too much for her brain to handle.

"The next one looks kinda like a double L with this egg shape next to it," Nia said thoughtfully.

She was kneeling in the snow outside Snowpoint Temple, trying to describe the symbols on the wall so Keith could find them in the book. How they had determined these roles was beyond him.

"That's the symbol for for the word attack," he said after a pause.

There was a momentary silence as the trainer from Hoenn waited patiently for Nia to give him the next word.

"So that's 'Sealed Away with the Ultimate Attacks' so far..." she mused. "Is this the symbol for grass?"

Keith leaned down and Nia waited anxiously as she listened to the quick turning of pages. He eventually nodded to confirm her question.

"The next two are water and fire," he added. "I'm on a page for elemental symbols."

Another hour or so and the rest of the message had been deciphered.

"Sealed Away with the Ultimate Attacks of Grass, Water, Fire. Awakens to the Ancient Ice, Rock, Steel."

Nia concentrated on every word as Keith read it out loud, trying to make sense of the two mysterious sentences. She then took out three pokeballs from her winter coat and showed them to Keith with the silly grin of someone who knows a secret.

"I have the Ultimate Attack starter pokemon," she explained. "I don't know what the second part means, but we can at least try this."

Staring at her in disbelief, Keith began to wonder if she wasn't under the influence of some medication. The Ultimate Attacks weren't real, were they? The only time he had heard them mentioned was when Professor Birch was giving away a starter pokemon to his older brother. He had since assumed that it was just a myth to try and keep trainers from dropping their starter in favor of a stronger pokemon later, having never actually seen one of the attacks performed in his travels.

Nevertheless, when Piplup, Turtwig, and Chimchar materialized in front of him, Keith couldn't help but be a little curious.

"Am I really supposed to believe this?" he asked, but the brunette just gave him a smug look.

"You three," she looked to the small group of pokemon, "I need you to use your Ultimate Attacks on this wall. I don't know what they're called, but please just do it!"

"Nia," Keith cut in quickly, "we can't just aim powerful attacks at an old temple! They could accidentally destroy it!"

It was too late to stop the three young pokemon from unleashing their elemental powers, though. The Piplup fired a steady stream of water at the stone wall nearly as big as its body, while Chimchar shot forth short bursts of fire that exploded on impact. Finally, Turtwig conjured a large root from thin air and used it to give the wall one last good smack.

Both trainers raised their eyebrows in surprise when nothing appeared to happen.

"Guess the wall is tougher than you thought, huh?" Nia elbowed her friend in the side.

Inside her head, Nia's mind was screaming in frustration.

But this doesn't make sense! People were killed to have these starter pokemon, and they end up doing nothing?

It was then that the ground began to shake and the stone wall with the cryptic writing began to sink into the ground, separating with some loud creaks from the other three walls. Too petrified with fear to move, Nia could only watch as the wall slid down completely from sight, revealing for the first time the inside of the temple. It was dark, obviously.

Keith sent out his Manectric to light their way. The dog pokemon crackled with electricity, and once it stepped into the dark room inside the temple, the trainers could see that its Spark attack was giving off enough light to see. They hesitantly followed it inside.

*****

"We could have stayed to watch the battle, you know."

Terri spun around to glare at the fisherman, who adjusted his orange hat uncomfortably under her gaze. He had wanted to stop to watch a trainer's Seviper battle another's Shuppet, of all things. She continued walking and was relieved to hear the footsteps of the other two behind her.

"My odds were on the Shuppet," Elea commented. "Its trainer had more experience."

"Ha!" Carter countered. "That Seviper totally knew Crunch, you could tell it was waiting to use it."

For once, Terri admitted to herself, he was right. With a snarl, she shook the thought from her head as they traveled westward, now on foot. She looked curiously at what appeared to be some sort of rock formation at the top of a large hill.

"Did that map we looked at in Lilycove show the cave as being on top of a hill?" she asked.

"There was a lake facing it," Carter answered, "so if we go up there and see that, we probably got the right place."

The two started climbing up the grassy hill before they noticed Elea was still a few feet behind. She was staring longingly at the mountain poking out of the water behind them.

"I think I will go to Mt. Pyre after this," she said. "I want to look for the elusive Chimecho."

Terri and Carter ignored this random outburst and continued climbing. Terri found herself growing to like the fisherman once again, the brief phase of jealousy having just ended. In the end, she decided, he was just a nice guy to everyone, and it wasn't actually more complicated than that. She opened her mouth to speak to him at the top of the hill, but then Elea joined them.

True to the map, a lake lay to the left and a large stone structure to the right. Looking at the smoothed rock dome, there was no obvious way inside. Remembering the near-fatal consequences it had caused last time, Terri was reluctant to tell her pokemon to dig into the side of the rock wall. But they were running out of time, it would have to do. She called upon her ground type.

"Pupitar, I need you to dig into the side of this rock."

The blue cocooned pokemon hopped forward, stared at the wall it was supposed to be breaking into, and stared back at its trainer. It tried to move nonexistant arms, and it was then that Terri realized her pokemon had very limited mobility in its evolved form. She recalled it with a blush, looking to her partners for ideas. Elea suppressed a smile and sent out her mirror-like levitating pokemon.

"Bronzor, give it a good Gyro Ball," she commanded.

She then looking to Terri as if to say 'I won this round.' The flat blue pokemon spun in midair, forming a sphere of gray energy in front of it, before releasing the attack and letting it slam into the wall. The attack went straight through the rock and ricocheted off something on the inside with a metallic CLANG!

Elea curiously peered through the hole Bronzor had created, only to see a circle of red spheres light up right in front of her. As probably should have been expected, the entire stone cave exploded at that moment when a strange gurgling noise came from the direction of the red dots. Hit by a large boulder, Carter flew backwards and slid to a stop at the base of a nearby tree.

That left the two girls. Elea sent out her only remaining pokemon, the Slakoth, while Terri released Ivysaur and Zubat to join Pupitar. Everyone turned to face the legendary pokemon, and were instantly intimidated by it.

The large round mass of shiny steel, complete with long arms to swat away attackers, stood towering over the five pokemon.

"Slakoth, keep your distance and use Shock Wave!" Elea started shouting orders. "Bronzor, become invisible with Reflect and start firing Gyro Balls from where it can't get to you!"

As Terri was telling her Zubat to try an Air Cutter from behind, she felt Carter's presence next to her once again.

"Get out of the way!" he shouted, pulling Terri down with him as he lay flat on the grass. "Now Hydro Pump!"

A jet of water passed overhead, followed by an extremely large steam of water. Making sure to keep her head low, Terri glanced back to see Tentacool and Wailord in the small lake, and their attacks were impressive at such a distance. The jets of water knocked Registeel over backwards, but the steel pokemon simply kept on rolling and ended back up in a standing position again. It then raised one of its long gray arms to the water and unleashed an electric attack, which was quickly conducted back to the two water pokemon, knocking them out completely.

If Zubat's continued Air Cutters were doing any damage, Registeel was not letting on to it at all, not even bothering to acknowledge the bat's presence.

"Ivysaur, Sleep Powder," Terri cried, finding an opening. "Pupitar, protect Ivysaur!"

She knew that putting the pokemon to sleep was their only remote hope at catching it, so it was essential that Ivysaur's attack hit. Elea ordered Slakoth to join Pupitar as protection, as its Shock Waves seemed to do little more than cause Registeel to itch the site of the attack.

The three trainers watched hopelessly as the toad-like pokemon leapt forward to unleash its spores but was quickly driven into the ground by a vicious Hammer Arm attack. Then, astonishingly, Registeel jumped a few inches off the ground. When the extremely heavy pokemon landed again, shock waves spread through the ground as a horribly powerful Earthquake attack rendered all pokemon but Bronzor unconscious, although its Reflect disguise was destroyed. The humans, having been a farther distance away from the attack, were simply knocked over, but still not in good shape.

Knowing it was the last hope, Bronzor zipped around Registeel's body, rapidly delivering Gyro Balls whenever it could find an opening. The legendary steel pokemon was unable to connect an attack with Bronzor and thus ended up flailing its arms around hopelessly. Suddenly, the pokemon's last-ditch instinct kicked in and it exploded in order to eliminate the threat.

After the heat and winds from the exploding pokemon had subsided, Terri charged in with an Ultra Ball in her hand.

*****

Listening to the Snowpoint City Police Officer on his phone, Rowan stared dumbfounded at the hill he was about to ascend.

"It's open?" he shouted into the receiver. "How the hell did someone open the temple? When I went in with the team of Electrodes, absolutely ****ing nothing happened!"

He hung up hurriedly and charged up the hill. There was much less time than he had thought. The man in the black suit was greeted by the scene of several unconscious pokemon laying around, including a Wailord, but most importantly he spotted a short-haired girl in jean shorts holding up an Ultra Ball triumphantly.

Rowan charged forward and grabbed her other arm with all the strength he had. He knew he could probably use Haunter and the threat of death to get it from her, but there was no time for that. Instead, he released a tall green-and-white pokemon that appeared to have blades for arms.

"Gallade, Teleport us to Snowpoint City immediately."

END CHAPTER FOUR


	6. SNOWPOINT TEMPLE

CHAPTER FIVE - SNOWPOINT TEMPLE

Carter was thrown to the ground by Registeel's vicious explosion. This time, unlike being knocked into a tree a few minutes before, he was sure something had broken. Possibly a rib, judging by the amount of pain he got from trying to sit up.

When the smoke finally cleared, he could see the legendary steel pokemon no longer. Terri had taken the opportunity to easily catch it and was now standing in a sort of victory pose holding the Ultra Ball out in front of her body. For a second he locked eyes with her and tried to convey the message of pain, but Terri's pupils widened suddenly and she turned to her left to find a man in a black suit approaching her.

Carter had a small heart attack as he recognized the same man who had captured Regirock and threatened to kill Elea. The man forcefully grabbed Terri's skin-and-bone arm, sending out a pokemon as he did so. A green and white figure materialized from the pokeball, and Carter recognized it immediately. Every teenage boy dreamed of owning a Gallade, but he had never actually seen one up close before.

"Gallade, Teleport us to Snowpoint City immediately!"

The pokemon lay one of its scythe-arms on its trainer's shoulder and they both instantly vanished, along with Terri.

There was an odd peace that followed. The adrenaline of the Registeel battle and the other man's sudden appearance were replaced by a dead silence. Elea slowly got up from her hiding place near the edge of the lake and walked over to Carter to sit by him. They sat wordlessly for a few minutes as the pokemon began to regain consciousness.

"Do you think Terri will be okay?" Elea asked eventually.

Carter took a moment before answering.

"Yeah. I think so. I trust her."

After making sure the fisherman was going to be fine, Elea walked over to withdraw her two pokemon for a much-needed rest. Seeing her companion was still deep in thought, she ducked behind the cover of a nearby tree and flipped open her cell phone to make a quick call.

"My job is done," she muttered into the receiver. "If he captures Regigigas, he wins. If she captures it, we win."

As Norman had predicted, his daughter had taken the Wailord trainer with her, and that had almost caused Terri to have second thoughts. Elea had definitely done her work by distancing Terri from Carter. The last thing they needed was for someone to bring out the girl's morals.

*****

Snowpoint City? Terri wasn't sure she had heard Rowan correctly. If that was a city in Hoenn, she had never heard of it. Nevertheless, in the blink of an eye she was standing in what appeared to be a small town, and it was snowing lightly. She was dizzy from the psychic attack and wanted to sit down, only to discover about two inches of snow covering the ground.

The tall psychic pokemon that had transported them let out a wheeze and collapsed in the snow. It writhed in apparent pain, leaving the girl at a loss for how to respond. This was a huge contrast to the past few days learning of Carter's infinite compassion for his pokemon.

While Terri stared at the fainted Gallade, the Ultra Ball containing Registeel was wrenched from her grip. The man standing next to her looked at the blue pokeball, gave a little smirk, and turned to Terri.

"Teleporting over long distances is very hard on a pokemon," he explained. "Gallade will probably die now. If you don't wish to end up dying slowly and painfully like that, I suggest you leave here now."

Terri looked at Rowan fearfully before taking off at a sprint toward the pokemon center. She hid behind the building for a moment, trying to take in the situation. She had no pokemon, nobody to help her, and she didn't know where she was. Terri didn't know what made her go back, but she did. She used the cover of another nearby building to watch what Rowan was doing.

Having delivered his threat, Rowan released his Haunter from its pokeball and turned to the strange box-shaped stone building behind him. The body of his other pokemon on the ground, now stiff and unmoving, was left alone. It appeared to be missing the front wall, just as the policeman had described it to him over the phone. As expected, it was completely dark inside, so Haunter led the way. It produced a faint sort of flame that hovered in the air in front of it as they walked, giving off just enough light to make out shapes.

To his horror, he saw upon walking inside that there were others as well. Two other people were walking around with some sort of quadrupedal pokemon that was giving off electricity.

They must be the ones who opened the temple! Rowan thought. But how could they possibly have gotten ahold of the Ultimate Attack pokemon?

He motioned for Haunter to discontinue its attack before the two trainers realized he was there. Using the darkness to his advantage, Rowan was easily able to sneak up behind the group of intruders to the temple. The pair was staring at what appeared to be a large stone monument. Illuminated by the dog pokemon's electricity, it became apparent that the statue was a very detailed portrayal of a large, bulky pokemon with thick arms sticking out of the sides conspicuously. Of course, most of this image was just in Rowan's head, for the others could not possibly see the whole statue. It took up nearly the entire room.

It was then that the man examined these intruders. The male he didn't recognize at all, but when he looked toward the female, his heart skipped a beat. He knew it was the Willows' daughter, the one he had failed to kill. She must have had the starter pokemon all along!

The dog pokemon with them, he recognized as Manectric, sniffed the air suspiciously before suddenly turning around to growl at Rowan. The two trainers also spun around with a gasp and the male ordered his Manectric to attack. The blue-and-yellow dog pokemon launched itself at the older man but the Spark attack was blocked by Haunter, who dove in front of its trainer at the last moment.

"Shadow Claw!" he shouted in retaliation, while the Manectric's trainer called for a Thunderbolt.

Rowan suddenly dropped to the ground as the boy punched him in the face. Nia stood her distance from both the pokemon fight and the men's fight. Being much younger, Keith had a slight strength advantage and was able to kick Rowan away. He hurled his other pokeballs, calling for them to protect him. Nia could hear the cries of Zangoose, Vigoroth, and Skarmory as they readied for battle, and she knew Clamperl was around somewhere as well.

Laughing to himself, Rowan countered by pulling out a single pokeball and releasing whatever was inside. The only thing visible was an H-shaped formation of glowing orbs, but they gave off enough light to roughly make out its shape. Nia's heart clenched with horror when she realized how much space the massive pokemon actually took up.

"Skarmory, use Spikes so that thing can't move around!" Keith called out immediately.

With an unearthly roar, Rowan's monster pokemon formed a small orange sphere in front of its body, before unleashing it in an explosion that shook the entire building. The stone walls on the remaining three sides of the temple were fired away from the building like a cannon, leaving the roof to fall down on those present. Nia and Keith both screamed as the large slab of rock, previously sitting nicely on top of the temple's four walls, plummeted down to crush them. With a swift uppercut, the pokemon Rowan had released, a large brown one, impacted the collapsing roof and it too exploded outward in every direction.

"That was Ancientpower," the professor said in slight awe, before turning to the statue that Nia and Keith had been observing before he came.

It was the only thing unaffected by Regirock's attack. If Skarmory had managed to pull off its Spikes attack, those too had been scattered far away from the temple, so it was a marvel to see the stone monument just as it had been before. Before he could admire the large white figure, however, the younger man was back on the offensive.

"Vigoroth, Hammer Arm that rock pokemon," he called, "Zangoose, you use Close Combat too!"

In a blur, the two white-and-red pokemon were on top of Regirock pounding away with quick glancing blows. The pokemon, however, just grumbled, and raised its arms as if summoning some unknown power. Out of nowhere, a powerful wind circulated around its body, stirring up dirt and snow alike from the ground. Both of the attacking pokemon were subsequently thrown to the ground, and neither got back up.

Keith paused. His two most powerful pokemon were just defeated in a single blow, and didn't seem to have done much in return. He was about to shout to the three others to try a joint attack, but the hulking rock pokemon didn't actually seem interested in killing him. Or Nia for that matter, who was currently clutching his side with her eyes closed.

Regirock turned away from them to face Rowan, roaring again as it had done when it was first released. It held its long, uneven arms together in front of its body and readied some sort of beam attack. However, Rowan was quicker to the draw. He held the Master Ball out quickly and recalled the rogue pokemon before it could attack him. The familiar Haunter floated back over to his side, and on his other side was a blue snail pokemon that Nia recognized as Gastrodon.

"I suggest you children leave if you know what's good for you," his low voice threatened. "Especially you, Miss Willow. It would be a shame to have to kill you the same way I did to your parents."

Keith felt the girl's grip around his middle tighten exponentially. He looked down to her pleading eyes and decided nobody should have to face fear like this.

"Skarmory, Air Cutter on those two pokemon, and if you hit the man, that's good too. Manectric, cover what he doesn't get with Flamethrower. Clamperl... oh, I don't know, how about you send a Surf attack over there and try and trip Rowan."

His mouth set in a firm line, Keith held onto Nia as the fire, water, and air elemental attacks streaked toward the enemy. Rowan, however, seemed to think better and pulled another Master Ball from his suit pocket. He sent out a crystalline blue pokemon in front of him that took up a large amount of space.

The huge, disorganized mass of ice took the attacks easily, not even melting slightly from the Flamethrower. Then, angry at those who had just attacked it, a series of yellow dots appeared from somewhere within the frozen creature. They glowed dimly at first, in a cross shape, but then scattered randomly throughout the ice and produced a harsh light.

There was a howling in Keith's ears as chilling air quickly moved to the bodies of his three remaining pokemon. The temperature lowered significantly and he watched hopelessly as crystals of ice began appearing on their bodies.

"No!" he shouted. "Try and get away! Manectric, Overheat attack!"

The dog pokemon burst into a ball of flames, but it was the only one who successfully staved off the attack. Clamperl had long ago withdrawn into its shell, defeated, while Skarmory fell from the sky and landed next to Nia with a sickening thud. Keith grimaced as he returned his four unconscious pokemon to their balls.

Just like with the rock pokemon before it, the ice creature seemed to shift its focus now that it had gotten its revenge. The cluster of yellow orbs inside it moved to the rear. They almost gave off the impression of eyes that were staring at Rowan.

A shrill noise pierced the air as Regice fired an Ice Beam attack at the man in the black suit. This time Rowan had no time to recall the dangerous pokemon and simply fell to the ground covering his head. Gastrodon leapt bravely in the path of the attack to protect its trainer. Rowan and Haunter could only stare dumbly as the large snail pokemon was completely encased in a block of ice.

"Holy ****! We need to get out of here!" Keith beckoned to Manectric as he started running out of the temple area with Nia.

Dashing behind a nearby house, they came across a teenage girl who was peeking around the corner and watching the whole battle with wide eyes. Her tanktop and jean shorts were definitely out of place in this city. Nia ignored her.

"T-this all happened b-because of me," she said to Keith. "We n-need to find out what... happens..."

"We can watch from here, though," he said, and Manectric vehemently nodded its head to agree.

Rowan let out a sigh of relief as Haunter's Hypnosis attack had been successful in putting a temporary stop to Regice's attacks. He admitted to himself that the ice Regi probably scared him more than the others. And he would somehow have to control them all enough to attack the large statue still standing in the rubble.

The solution was suddenly clear. He darted over to the stone monument, standing next to a foot that was larger than his entire body. He chucked the other two Master Balls over to where Regice was just now awakening.

"Haunter, I need you to launch a Shadow Ball into the ground in front of those pokemon," he said quickly.

The levitating purple pokemon nodded and fired a ball of black energy into the ground, spraying the three Regi pokemon with dirt and snow. As the legendary pokemon turned to face Haunter, Rowan quickly made a dash for the backside of the statue to protect himself. The ghost pokemon made to follow him, but its trainer shook his head.

"You have to stay out front and be a target for their attacks," he said forcefully.

Haunter wandered back around to the front of the statue unsurely. There was a murmur of three primitive voices as the Regi pokemon saw him. Haunter even knew the names of the attacks they were charging: Ice Beam, Flash Cannon, and Hyper Beam. Once they fired, which seemed imminent, it would be a matter of a split second before he was struck down.

I shouldn't have to sacrifice myself, the ghost pokemon thought, I always do what he says when I have to kill people and never get anything out of it!

Two low rumbling roars and a high-pitched screech signaled the release of the deadly beam attacks. At the same time, Haunter's body erupted in a black fire as the pokemon bitterly accepted the hit. Haunter was smashed against the statue, and then slid to the ground unconscious. The Regi pokemons' attacks lasted just a split second longer to all touch the large white statue Rowan was hiding behind, and it suddenly began to vibrate.

The man jumped back, startled by this development, before realizing what was happening. All of Rowan's months of work came to a peak as he anxiously waited to see his beautiful monster wake up. Regigigas. And it was his for the taking!

"Gaah!" he suddenly screamed out as a black fire erupted all over his body.

The pain inside his body was intense but short-lasting. Rowan had absolutely no idea what had just happened, but he was fine as long as it didn't interfere with his ultimate goal. With the force of an earthquake, the statue suddenly broke apart to reveal a similarly shaped pokemon underneath. As soon as he saw the former statue's foot become a forest green color, Rowan knew he had suceeded.

He looked over Regigigas from top to bottom. It was mostly white and yellow with the exception of large colored jewels on its chest corresponding to the types of rock, ice, and steel. Overall, a fearsome pokemon that was taller than any other building in Snowpoint City.

At this point the three Regi pokemon were crying out, trying to get the attention of their master. The large white pokemon reached out a hand, which was the size of all three legendary pokemon put together, and held it there for a moment as if debating what to do.

Then, with a low bellow that threatened to burst Rowan's eardrums, it brought the hand down on the trio and smashed them into the ground. After it finished attacking, Rowan could hear a girl's scream and knew the pesky trainers must have stuck around to watch. But that no longer mattered as he brought out his final Master Ball.

Staring at it, Rowan reflected upon the great expense of these certain pokeballs. He had been forced to sell everything he owned, along with everything in the lab of the Willows, in order to afford four of them. To buy one was almost unheard of, but four! He had to sell his soul!

The man pulled his arm back to throw it when he was suddenly seized with pain again. The mysterious black flames encased his body, but only seemed to burn from the inside. He doubled over on the ground in pain, crying out.

This unfortunately caused Regigigas to notice the tiny figure sprawled on the ground by its right foot. With a simple kicking motion, it sent the man flying into a crushed stone pillar, where he slumped to the ground like a puppet.

Back behind the closest house, Terri had watched the whole scene while ignoring the screams of the other two people with her and their Manectric. She felt a pit in her stomach as she looked at Regigigas. She knew that Rowan had been holding a Master Ball as well. He was laying only a few yards away and she could easily dart over there unnoticed by the gargantuan legendary pokemon.

I could capture this thing, she thought. There would be absolutely nothing that could ever stop me. THIS is a legend, unlike the other three who we were able to attack. There was NOTHING that could probably even harm Regigigas!

But was it right? The little voice in the back of Terri's head sounded exactly like Carter. She groaned. Terri had already been aware that Carter had demonstrated the need for a bond with your pokemon, and she had to admit that his were more willing to give it their all in a fight.

The monster roared again, and even covering her ears couldn't stop the pain it caused in her head. Either way, she had to capture it just to make sure it didn't go on a rampage all over Sinnoh killing everyone.

Other than the extremely loud cries, Regigigas had been fairly calm so far. This made Terri wonder if it just wanted to be left alone. Rowan and the other Regis had been invading its "territory," so to speak, so that explained the attacks on them.

At an opportune moment when Regigigas was turned around, Terri sprinted for all she was worth toward the limp body of Rowan. She pried the Master Ball out of his hands and was about to fling it when the legendary pokemon suddenly turned to face her again. It roared, causing Terri to almost drop the Master Ball, and lifted up a hand again. It was the same motion that had smashed the Regi pokemon into the ground, so Terri knew she had to act fast.

When Regigigas brought its arm down to swat her, Terri flung the Master Ball upward while screaming and covering her head. It didn't occur to her that her arms would be of absolutely no protection, but she didn't have to worry when the building-sized pokemon suddenly changed to a red light. It was slowly sucked into the Master Ball before the familiar ping sounded.

Terri had discovered a new-found respect for the powerful pokemon. She started walking away with the intent of leaving the Master Ball right there for some unfortunate soul to come across later.

Just think of the infinite power, a voice sounding like her dad's said inside her mind. I could finally be proud of you.

To take advantage of a legendary pokemon captured in a Master Ball was wrong, there was no doubt in Terri's mind about it. But there was still that strange little temptation inside of her to take Regigigas and become the most powerful trainer in the world in an instant.

But that's not what being a hero is about, Terri convinced herself. If I don't do the right thing in the end, then there never were any heroes.

After a moment, Terri sighed and swallowed her pride. In the large indent created by Regigigas's foot, she looked to the Master Ball sitting on the ground...

...and picked it up before leaving.

"We can just wait for the police to get here," Keith reassured Nia. "They will find that girl and make sure she doesn't get away with taking Regigigas."

The brunette's eyes suddenly widened.

"Keith, we have to leave now," she said hurriedly. "The police are corrupt, remember? They will find some way to charge us with Rowan's death! They're ON HIS SIDE!"

The boy put his arms on her shoulders to stop her freaking out. He smiled warmly at her, which caused Nia to quit down with curiosity.

"What do we do?" she whispered.

"We keep running away," he said. "I hear you're pretty good at that."

*****

END CHAPTER 5

By the way, the thing with Haunter at the end was his Curse attack if I didn't explain how it worked well enough.


	7. CANALAVE HARBOR

CHAPTER SIX - CANALAVE HARBOR

"How may I help you?"

Terri's mouth opened briefly, then closed again before any words could come out. She was having a tough time making a decision. The woman at the ticket booth stared at her expectantly.

"I need the next ship to Slateport City," the brunette said halfheartedly.

Now is not the time to panic, she told herself. Make a scene and you will give away the fact that Regigigas is captured.

Nevertheless, the need to make a decision was causing her to almost panic. It had occurred to Terri that she could go anywhere from here and likely get away with it. She could go back to Hoenn as per the plan of course. But now, far away from both Lilycove and Snowpoint City, her whole drawn-out plan to conquer the Hoenn League in order to gain permission from her father to go back to Johto... it seemed silly now.

I can beat down whoever's in my way! Terri thought. My father can't even stop me!

Plus entering the Hoenn League would mean giving away the actual fact that she DID have Regigigas to the public, and the consequences for that would be huge.

Back home it is, then.

"I'm sorry," she interrupted the ticket booth woman's writing, "can I change that to Olivine City instead?"

After receiving a dirty look, Terri eventually got her new boat ticket, charging the price of it to her dad's credit card for lack of another method to pay. He would know where she went, of course, upon receiving the report for his credit card, but that wasn't important.

"I'm old enough to make these decisions for myself!" she said out loud to nobody.

Terri relaxed into a park bench in the shipyard area of Canalave City, taking in the warmth. She spread her arms and legs out so as to receive as much sun as possible. To any passerby, she would have looked strange sprawled all over the bench, but Terri was still thawing out from Snowpoint City, so she didn't care.

Her watch showed 10:15 as the time, with the Olivine boat leaving at noon. She had some time to nap.

*****  
The short, chubby man made his way out of the basement of Snowpoint City's gym. The bunker underneath the unassuming building had provided for a great training ground over the past few days.

"Roger, have you made any progress?" a female voice asked.

The man, dressed in a policeman's outfit, spun around to face Candice, the gym leader. He nodded, pulling a sheet of paper from his back pocket.

"My compilation of each pokemon's known techniques is almost complete. Regirock seems to only know moves similar to Sandstorm, Ancientpower, and Hyper Beam, but it damn near destroyed your bunker."

Candice frowned. She had been counting on her Abomasnow being able to hold off the rock one. Time to revise her plan.

"And of Regice?" she asked unassumingly.

Roger rubbed the top of his bald head nervously.

"I haven't tested Regice as much as the others," he admitted, not meeting the gym leader's gaze. "It scares me, to be honest: a giant mobile glacier that can nearly make me faint with its screeches."

He had formed a suspicion ever since she agreed to let him use her gym basement that she desired the ice Regi as payment. This question only further served to reinforce it. He had to find some way out with all three at some point.

"Nothing can survive Registeel's Explosion," he said mostly to divert the topic but also as a disguised threat. "It even knocked out my two Drifblim, and I didn't think that was possible."

The pig-tailed woman nodded, taking a moment of silence to take in that information.

"And the Hypnosis method?" she inquired. "That does work then? You are able to control them?"

"As much as you would expect," Roger answered ambiguously.

Feeling a sort of unsaid threat in the air, he made a mental note to later look up what Ice pokemon were capable of using Hypnosis.

The policeman descended the steps into Snowpoint Gym's basement once more, left with the feeling that Candice was not to be trusted.

After he was out of sight, Candice re-entered her battle arena where a small, limber black pokemon was waiting for her.

"Sneasel, we need to double your training on dark-type moves."

The pokemon nodded and bared its small fangs, indicating it wanted to master Bite first. Candice smiled, envisioning the Bite attack puncturing balloons.

*****  
"How may I help you?"

Nia appeared to think for a second how to respond, but drawing a blank, she looked to Keith.

"Sinnoh is the only home I've ever known," she said quietly, trying not to let the woman at the ticket booth overhear her. "I don't know where to go..."

The woman, whose name was Marge, did indeed overhear the comment and found herself rolling her eyes. The indecisiveness of people today was astounding! In her opinion, the ticket booth job was hardly worth it now, but back a few years ago she had jumped at the opportunity to leave her gambling parents behind.

Nia and Keith were meanwhile still continuing their conversation.

"If it doesn't matter to you," he reasoned, "we might as well just go to the Johto region. I was planning on doing that next year after I completed Sinnoh, but it won't hurt to start now!"

Listen to him, Marge tried to convey the message to the teenage girl telepathically. Then I can write your ticket and be done with you!

Nia's round little face instead turned to a frown.

"You only had one gym left to beat in Sinnoh," she said. "It's not fair that you should have to quit now just because of me. You would have gone to the Sinnoh League too! Oh, why don't you just leave me here to go somewhere by myself?"

The boy shook his head and wrapped an arm around her. They stood in silence for a moment, much to Marge's dismay. Eventually Keith realized that a line was forming behind them, so he turned to the window.

"Two tickets to Olivine City," he stated confidently, and the woman working there was happy to oblige, of course.

The pair walked further into the shipyard to find a place to sit down. For Keith, it was an easy silence that he walked with, but for Nia it was deafening.

It's like I'm mooching off of him, she thought. I need to train Seadra and Goldeen to become my own trainer. I'm sure I can win enough battles to support myself.

As an afterthought, Nia decided that she probably had some sort of responsibility to train the starter pokemon as well. At least they formed a balanced team.

"That's her!" Keith's hiss threw off Nia's train of thought. "The girl that captured Regigigas! Look!"

They were standing only a couple yards away from the girl. Keith had apparently committed her tank top, jean shorts, and short brown hair to memory, which annoyed Nia for a moment, but upon taking a closer look she saw he was right.

"Right," she said, grabbing his arm, "so let's go over THIS way!"

"We need to make her release it!" they were talking in hushed tones as the girl seemed to be sleeping.

"Well, she is technically within her rights as a trainer to capture a wild pokemon."

Keith shot Nia a look that made her feel dumb, but nevertheless followed her to another bench far away from Regigigas-girl. After they left, Terri opened one eye slowly to see where the two had gone. Hopefully they wouldn't go around blabbing their story.

Her watch read 11:17 now. Terri cursed the two trainers for waking her up and causing enough of a scare that she wouldn't be able to get back to sleep easily. Maybe if there were no more interruptions.

*****  
Elea shook her head in amusement. She and Carter had spent the better part of yesterday trekking up to Fortree City so he could fish for a Feebas, and now the fisherman was simply teasing the poor fish. From what she could gather, his Tentacool was under the orders to chase Feebas around the fountain and pretend like it was going to use Poison Sting.

When they had first arrived in Lilycove, Elea had seen the large fountain in the middle of town and wondered why someone would ever want to build such a thing. It then occurred to her that it was for water pokemon fanatics like Carter, and that he would probably fit right in in the town.

"I'm going to call Terri," Carter said. "She's been missing for two whole days now."

Neither one of them wanted to admit to the possibility that Rowan had killed her, so they  
instead chose not to stress about it yesterday and pretend that she was certainly okay. Elea held her breath as he dialed the number.

"Terri! Hi!" Carter's voice resonated with relief. "You're where? … I guess we can do that... But... I don't care if you're trying to sleep! … Hello?"

"She's alive," he reported, to which Elea gave a look that plainly said 'no ****.'

"She's in Canalave City about to board a ship," he said. "It goes to Olivine City in Johto and we're supposed to send over her pokemon when she gets there."

This was terrible news for Elea. She could easily imagine Norman sending her over to Johto to retrieve his daughter.

"Why on earth would she want to go to Johto?" Elea moaned.

"Because it's her home, I guess," Carter shrugged. "Maybe she has someone waiting for her back home, like a boyfriend or something."

There was a shrill cry from the fountain below them as Feebas actually did get stung. Tentacool looked up to the two trainers with such an unreadable expression (actually, all of its expressions were unreadable, but this one even more so) that they both had to laugh. Carter recalled his new fish pokemon, sending it to the safety of a pokeball rather than leaving it cowering in the bottom of the fountain.

"I thought you were her boyfriend," Elea said evenly.

This comment cued a second round of laughter from the blond boy.

"I guess I kind of like her," he explained, "but she doesn't like me, for sure."

Elea's phone took the opportunity to start vibrating during the moment of silence that followed. Thankful for the distraction, the dark-haired girl walked a few feet away so Carter couldn't hear. She cleared her throat to assume a slightly lower pitch before answering.

"Yes, this is Jeremy," she said.

"I know where Terri went," Norman said on the other line. "My credit card report shows me."

"I already know. She is heading to Olivine City."

"How do... never mind. She will likely head to Goldenrod, so I need you to intercept her before that."

Elea sighed, "You don't have anyone in Johto that can take care of it?"

"Nobody that I don't have to explain to. Remember, catch her before Goldenrod at all costs, and Jeremy, please don't come back empty-handed."

"Sir, have you ever considered just explaining to your daughter..."

"NO!" the man screamed. "She would never understand. We will keep in touch. Goodbye."

Elea went back to Carter and briefly explained her need to travel to Johto. Unsurprisingly, he wanted to go too.

"We can go on the back of Wailord if you want," he offered. "It should be fun!"

The tall, skinny girl was struck with horror at the idea. If he saw what was on the open waters... he couldn't know just yet. She had a feeling he would help, but not this soon.

"Let's take a boat over to Johto," Elea proposed, "because we need to hurry. We can take Wailord on the way back."

Half an hour later found the pair aboard the S. S. Tidal heading to Olivine City. Elea looked around the small, windowless cabin they had been given before smiling mischievously.

"What do you say to a little battle?" she asked, pulling a pokeball from her belt.

In a flash a small tan sloth sat on the ground in front of her with a bored expression. Carter laughed.

"I've seen that pokemon before," he said, "it's the slowest thing ever! I choose... well, I only have one option, don't I?"

He sent out Tentacool to face Elea's Slakoth, having deemed Wailord and Feebas both unable to battle in a small, dry cabin.

"Tentacool, Poison Sting!" he commanded confidently.

The jellyfish pokemon lifted both its tentacles to release a spray of poison darts. A few hit Slakoth before Elea called an attack for it.

"Now, Solarbeam!" she said, and gave Carter a little grin she had been trying to hide.

Carter, like most people, understood that Solarbeam was a powerful beam attack, but didn't know the exact mechanics of how it worked. He looked bewildered as the room rapidly darkened. Slakoth sucked all of the light into a ball in front of its mouth and proceeded to swallow the energy. The room was dark and silent for a moment.

"What the..." Carter began.

"Shock Wave!" Elea's voice drowned out his obscenity.

A bolt of electricity streamed across the field and shocked Tentacool severely. The blue jellyfish pokemon struggled to sit itself back up before starting to produce a red glow from the orbs on its head. In the dim light Tentacool turned to its trainer and the two shared a look of utter confusion.

"Well, Tentacool, Wrap attack," Carter told it, trying to form some kind of battle plan in his head.

Tentacool launched itself forward, just barely able to discern where Slakoth was recovering from its use of Shock Wave. It wrapped its stingers around the sloth's midsection, pinning the pokemon's arms to its side.

"Slakoth, use Faint Attack to get out of its grip!" Elea called.

This shocked Carter, for he had been expecting Slakoth to try another Shock Wave. Slakoth faded from existence as Tentacool's stingers began to clutch at nothing.

"Whirlpool, quickly!" Carter shouted, knowing what was coming next.

The small tan creature suddenly rematerialized just above Tentacool's head, prepared to strike with a dark aura around its body. Although Tentacool was unable to see, it obeyed Carter's command anyway and stirred up a vortex of water around its body.

In the faint red light produced by his pokemon, Carter watched as Slakoth thrashed around in the whirlpool in a desparate attempt to get out. A loud thump was heard as Tentacool released its grip with the Whirlpool attack and Slakoth went sailing into a wall.

The returning function of the ceiling lights signaled that Slakoth had fainted. Elea smiled and recalled her pokemon while Carter exchanged a high five with Tentacool before doing the same.

"Why are you not a pokemon trainer?" Elea asked.

"You're the one with all the secrets," Carter smiled innocently. "I'm allowed to have one."

*****  
"How may I help you?"

The man standing before Marge now was handsome and also in his twenties, so she had high expectations for him.

"Um..." he looked at the schedule for a second, "I'm not exactly sure where I'm going. I just need to call someone quick."

Dear god, Marge was screaming in her head. She decided the universe must hate her today for cursing her with these people who have no idea what they're doing.

"Are you sure?" the man let out a sigh to whoever he was talking to on the phone. "... Understood. I will report back once I'm on the boat."

He flipped the cell phone shut and reached into the pocket in his khakis, replacing the cell phone in his hand with what seemed to be a badge of some sort.

"Detective Daniel Wright, Jubilife Police," he stated, showing the familiar symbol to the lady at the ticket counter. "I need to know what ticket a certain girl bought. Brown hair, came this morning, may have paid with credit?"

Marge remembered her well: the girl that had started off her bad day.

"Olivine City," she leaned in conspiratorially for dramatic effect. "I'm sure of it."

The handsome man nodded and purchased the same ticket. After leaving Marge with a wink, he set out to look for his suspect. His coworker Roger in Snowpoint City had only been able to recall a hair color, which complicated things. Dan sighed and decided it would be easier to wait till the S. S. Aqua boarded and then corner her while they were traveling.

Yes, he decided, that was definitely the best choice. If she did indeed have Regigigas in a pokeball, she could not let it out on board because the massive weight would cause them to sink. He felt the pokeballs under his vest absentmindedly, hoping that his trio of Drifblims would be enough to subdue her.

Dan had arrived just in time, too, for the ship to Olivine City was already boarding. As he walked to the end of the dock, he repeated his mantra silently.

Regigigas must not fall into their hands.

Regigigas must not fall into their hands.

*****  
"It's him! It's him! It's him!"

Nia was freaking out again after having recognized a certain tall man on their boat.

"He's the police officer who told me Rowan was no threat!" she screamed to the heavens before Keith covered her mouth.

After sitting in silence for a minute to make sure nobody had come to investigate the outburst, both trainers sighed and sat down on one of the beds in their cabin.

"And do you remember what I told you when you found me after that?"

"Not to get in your way."

"No... Well, yes, but... I also said I would take care of you." Keith groaned, his patience having been worn thin by this girl's paranoia.

He led her out into the hall just to demonstrate that everything was just fine. Keith admitted to himself that being in the same place as the man who probably okayed the killing of Nia's parents was a bad idea, but he wouldn't say it out loud. Besides, he had a clean sweep of the Snowpoint Gym Leader, he could probably protect both of them if it came to that.

Keith watched the younger girl stare out a window at the sea passing by, and land off in the distance that he assumed to be the mainland of Johto. Her eyes no longer bore the innocence she had when he first found her on the ground crying at Pal Park. The innocence had since become replaced with fear, and it would probably be hard to get rid of.

"Why are you staring at me?" Nia asked suddenly.

Blushing deeply, Keith was about to answer when he saw out of the corner of his eye a tall man with three round floating pokemon. Nia followed his line of sight and gasped upon discovering it was the Jubilife Police Officer, who stood in front of a nearby room as if debating whether or not to go in.

"Shadow Ball," the man commanded, and all three purple ghost pokemon launched a dark orb at the door, causing the wood to break apart in the middle.

Nia muffled a scream in her hands and Keith pulled her behind his body. He clutched a pokeball tightly.

"We can escape on Skarmory quick if he attacks," he muttered so only she could hear. "Now let's try and back away!"

Inside the room, Detective Dan was pleased to have caught his target by surprise. The teenage girl cried out at the sight of his three Drifblim, and the detective in him wondered if she had previous experience with Hypnosis attacks.

"Put her to sleep!" he called for the ghostly trio to employ the most common and easily controlled form of Hypnosis.

The purple balloons' eyes flashed a red color and all three began emitting red rings of energy that encircled the girl as she could do almost nothing in return.

The operation was going more smoothly than Dan had anticipated, considering it was Regigigas they were talking about. But then again, the girl, who had now fallen to her knees, likely didn't understand the true importance of the legendary pokemon.

Or perhaps she does, Dan revised in his mind as his target used the last of her strength to release the pokemon in the Master Ball at her waist.

It was then that he knew the boat was going to sink. A massive form emerged from the ball. Dan had never seen Regigigas before (as per most of the population) so he was astonished to find that he could only see the creature's foot. The rest of the white monster towered far above the boat.

They immediately began to go underwater, of course. The detective's responsibility at that point shifted to that of a police officer, and his job was to save everyone else on the boat. He dashed out of Regigigas-girl's cabin only to find that the windows to the outside were already displaying an underwater view.

"You get that cabin, you get that cabin, you get that cabin on the end, and I'll get this one!" he assigned each of his pokemon a room of passengers to save and darted in the one he had chosen for himself.

He discovered a man and his daughter huddling together for fear of the "strange noises" that the boat had made.

"We're sinking, get out!" Dan shouted at them. "Do you have any pokemon?"

"No," the father replied, "but I can swim. We'll be fine!"

After hearing the first crash Keith had sent out his metal bird pokemon and it had busted through the side of the boat with Steel Wing. He and Nia were now hovering over the scene and face to face with Regigigas for a second time.

The difference was this time the large pokemon seemed to notice them. It lifted a hand quickly and launched a white beam attack that narrowly missed Skarmory.

"Use Agility!" Keith called to his pokemon over Nia's screaming. "Don't worry, we can hold on!"

When a second Hyper Beam came their way, Skarmory banked off to the left. The two trainers riding on the bird had enough momentum that they almost fell off when it changed directions again. Keith had a death grip around Skarmory's neck, and Nia around Keith's chest. If he hadn't been so strong to hold on she probably would have been drowning at the bottom of the ocean at the moment.

Regigigas, seeing that its attack didn't connect, roared loudly as the gems on its head began to glow brightly. A group of large pointed boulders materialized in front of it and were fired toward Skarmory.

"Agility!" Keith closed his eyes.

He grunted as Skarmory dove left again, then a steep downward turn where Nia lost her grip and almost fell off. The bird pokemon flicked its wing back momentarily to push her back on and then dove sharply to the right.

A collective sigh was let out when the last of the Rock Slide attack missed and landed in the ocean.

"Skar!" Keith's pokemon cried out, motioning with its head toward Regigigas's midsection.

The three had been so preoccupied with not dying that they had failed to notice how the giant pokemon was rapidly sinking. The S. S. Aqua was ancient history by this point, not even being visible beneath the waves.

Just as suddenly as it had appeared, the massive Regigigas vanished as it was recalled into a pokeball. A collective sigh was let out, and Skarmory flew back down toward the water to see if everyone had made it out okay.

It appeared that everyone who they had seen boarding was now safely treading water or clutching onto one of the Drifblim for flotation. A couple people also seemed to have water pokemon, as a Blastoise and Sealeo were seen among others, and there was even a Staraptor supporting a young trainer in the air.

Skarmory moved closer to where Detective Dan Wright was on a Drifblim explaining the situation.

"She must have used Regigigas's height to launch herself away toward the mainland," he proposed. "It would be difficult to catch her now with out limited resources."

"Skar!" the metallic bird pokemon called out and pointed a wing to another ship not far away.

The passengers cheered, as they were now saved. The trainer with the Sealeo had his pokemon shoot an Aurora Beam into the air, hoping the multiple flashes of colored light would attract the attention of the boat.

Sure enough it sailed back around to pick up the shipwreck victims. The side of the huge boat identified it as the S. S. Tidal, nearly identical to the S. S. Aqua that had just been sunk.

On board already, Carter and Elea were among the passengers that had gone to the outside deck to watch people get pulled onto the boat.

"I can't believe the whole S. S. Aqua just went down like that," Carter commented. "I wonder what happened."

Elea murmured her agreement detachedly, but inwardly she had a mixture of emotions going on.

Surely we didn't do this, she thought.

END CHAPTER SIX


	8. PETALBURG GYM

CHAPTER SEVEN

A young man stood in front of the Petalburg Gym, debating whether or not to go in. He scratched the top of his head, covered with a thin layer of short black hair.

I was planning on using Rustboro as my first gym, the trainer thought. But I guess it can't hurt just to try here.

His strongest pokemon wouldn't have the overwhelming type advantage as it would in Rustboro, so he knew he would have to be careful in his approach to the battle. Zigzagoon and Gulpin would have to play around with their status moves for as long as possible to weaken the Gym Leader's pokemon for his secret weapon.

The glass door opened silently, allowing the trainer to walk inside unnoticed. The man he recognized as Norman was standing in a corner of the room facing away from him, apparently talking on a cell phone. The challenger was about to announce his presence when Norman raised his voice with whoever was on the phone with him.

"I said Jeremy will take care of that, Matt!" he nearly shouted. "You just need to go to Goldenrod and make sure there is no evidence. I know she will want to go there, and it's important that she finds nothing!"

Flipping his cell phone shut, Norman let out a long frustrated groan before turning around to discover he was not alone in the room.

"You!" he gasped. "You were the one working with Rowan when he came here!"

Vincent instinctively backed away as the gym leader reached for a pokeball on his belt. He had not expected to be recognized at all.

"I... I only did w-what I had to!" he stammered as Norman stared him down. "I don't even know what I was really helping with..."

"Such pathetic excuses," the gym leader interrupted. "The two of you overpowered me last time and spared my life, but I will not be so merciful."

From the maniacal glint in the man's eye, Vincent knew it was time to run. He spun around to dart out of the building but found a large tan pokemon blocking his way. The creature resembled a gorilla and had the same demonic look as its trainer.

"Slaking, use Yawn on this intruder," Norman instructed it. "We can't have him escaping."

As the normal-type pokemon let out a deep breath of air on Vincent, he began to feel dizzy and fell to his knees. It was all he could do to release his three pokemon to protect him.

"Help!" he gasped to them before passing out on the floor.

Tentacruel sprang into action immediately, motioning for Gulpin to distract Slaking while Zigzagoon went after Norman to make sure he didn't send out any more powerful pokemon. The jellyfish pokemon scooped up Vincent's limp body in its tentacles and combined its Poison Sting attack with Gulpin's lazy stream of Poison Gas to force Slaking out of the doorway.

The large sloth pokemon gagged and vomited all over Gulpin, but the slime pokemon simply absorbed the digested matter as energy. Tentacruel took this as their opportunity to leave and tackled Slaking's legs head-on.

Zigzagoon, meanwhile, clamped down tightly onto Norman's left shoulder with its teeth, growling viciously as the man tried to pull it off. The distraction worked perfectly as the racoon pokemon saw its two partners successfully maneuver around Slaking and get outside. It released its vice-like grip on Norman's now-bleeding flesh and began to dart toward the exit.

"Octillery, Thunder Wave," the gym leader's voice reached Zigzagoon's ears as it suddenly found itself unable to move.

Norman and his octopus pokemon approached the immobile striped pokemon warily, expecting the paralysis to wear off at any moment. The middle-aged man kicked the small pokemon curiously with his foot.

"Looks like lunch for you," he nodded to the pokemon and continued walking toward Slaking.

Behind him, Norman could hear the sound of suction cups snaking around the small pokemon's body followed by a series of strange slurping noises he did not want to investigate. Pushing past the nauseated Slaking, he peered outside to see no trace of Rowan's accomplice or the other pokemon anywhere.

Norman pulled out his cell phone once again with the intent of ending the mission in Olivine in favor of hunting down this boy. He then decided that the enemy probably knew of his plans anyway. Their resources were best used elsewhere.

*****  
"We believe that the girl with Regigigas might be working for a criminal organization," Detective Dan Wright explained to the two trainers he had invited into his cabin. "It is my job to catch her before she gives it away to their leader. This just proves that they were on the brink of discovering the Regi pokemons' locations, so we were right in hiring Rowan."

There was nothing for Dan to do until the S.S. Tidal docked in Olivine City, so he figured the best use of his time would be to try and explain the situation. The second they touched land, of course, he would jump off the boat and make a mad dash for the Cherrygrove City area where he estimated Regigigas-girl might have swam to shore.

Nia sat next to Keith on one of the beds, glaring intensely at the ground. She didn't believe a word of it. At least the detective didn't recognize her. Fortunately Keith could do the talking for her.

"Why did you have Rowan murder the Willow family then?" he demanded of the policeman.

The man looked startled for a moment before putting on a stern face.

"The Willows are simply missing," he remarked darkly. "Some lunatic is spreading around the rumor that Rowan murdered them, but I can assure you nothing of..."

Dan looked to the girl, suddenly cutting off in mid-sentence. Recognition dawned on his face, followed by a long awkward pause.

"So the girl that caught Regigigas is just your next innocent victim then?" Nia lashed out.

She stood up and motioned to Keith that they should leave. Hearing the door slam shut, Daniel Wright buried his head in his hands in frustration. He had seen video from Roger of the boy in fight against Rowan.

He would have been a valuable ally, but with that girl around it was useless trying to persuade him. Now that Dan thought about it, it was coincidental that the Willow girl and her friend were headed to Olivine. Too coincidental.

The Jubilife Officer jumped to his feet and set out to find where the two trainers had gone.

*****  
"About to retire for the day?" a woman's voice carried down the stairwell.

Roger smiled maliciously. Little did she know he wouldn't be coming back. He had all the data he needed now. The three pokeballs containing the Regi pokemon were stuffed into the pocket of his jacket.

"Yep!" he shouted back up. "Just about to grab my stuff and leave."

"Good," the voice was suddenly much closer and Roger spun around to find the Snowpoint Gym Leader blocking the way to the stairs. "You won't mind leaving the pokeballs here, then."

Candice stood with her hands on her hips, with a small black pokemon at her side. The police officer broke out in a cold sweat and he prepared to release his two Drifblim to protect him.

"W-what makes you think I took the Regis?" he asked, stalling for time.

"Every other night you leave them sitting on that table," she responded flatly and pointed to the table she was referring to.

The fight was inevitable, so Roger chose to take the advantage of the first move.

"Air Cutter, both of you!" he shouted, tossing the balls of his two ghost types into the air.

Both of the purple balloon pokemon trembled for a moment as if gathering power and then released twin jets of air toward Candice.

"Use Agility to avoid the attacks, Sneasel, then Bite!"

As he watched the ice-type effortlessly twist around the Air Cutter attacks as it darted forward, Roger comtemplated that she was probably the gym leader for a reason. The demon-like creature leapt onto one of his Drifblim, fangs bared, and bit down with such force that the ghost-type seemed to deflate a little. Unconscious now, it slowly drifted to the ground.

"Thunderbolt!" the Snowpoint policeman shouted to his one remaining pokemon.

"Sneasel, Dark Pulse."

Sneasel let go of the fainted Drifblim in favor of charging a black sphere in its hands and firing it at the balloon pokemon. Just like the first, the Drifblim fainted and sank to the ground. As Candice quickly crossed the room, Sneasel held one of its sharp claws out to Roger threateningly.

"We both know you want the Regi pokemon," the gym leader cut to the chase. "Well, I want Regice, so give that one to me and you keep the other two and we can both move on with our lives."

The bald man nodded and reached into his coat pocket, pretending to comply. He grabbed one of the Master Balls, not knowing which pokemon was inside. Roger acted as if he was going to hand her the ball, but pressed the front button at the last minute to send out the pokemon.

A large gray form materialized to separate Roger from Candice and her Sneasel. The woman in question gasped as she saw the titan face her. Her brain made the assumption that it was still under Hypnotic control, not remembering that both Drifblim were unconscious.

"Sneasel, Dark Pulse again!" she commanded, cowering up against the wall now.

The ice-type began charging the orb of dark energy in its hands, but Registeel's reflexes were too quick. It fired a bolt of electricity that sent Sneasel smashing into the wall, and then turned to Candice, who had ordered the attack.

Registeel's right hand glowed brightly for a second, and then faded to reveal the hand had been lengthened into sharp claws. It hummed in a low pitch and thrust the Metal Claw forward and into Candice's stomach. Blood spurted onto the floor and Candice's horrific screams reverberated throughout the basement as Registeel's claw emerged through her back.

Roger watched in numb shock as the gym leader's body convulsed violently, and then suddenly the screaming stopped and the arms were reduced to twitching. He recalled the legendary pokemon before it could deem him a threat as well.

As inappropriate as it was, the policeman had to chuckle when he thought of the scene Sneasel would wake up to. Making a point not to look at the mutilated corpse, Roger darted up the stairs to his freedom.

*****  
A faint smile passed across Terri's face as she walked down the familiar streets of Goldenrod City. It had been a while, for sure. Her house sat on the corner of this particular block, looking as if the Evans family had actually been the last people there.

It reassured her for some reason to know that their house was still vacant. This meant she could use it as a "home base" of sorts while she was finishing up her Johto League challenge.

Standing on the front doorstep now, Terri reached into the pocket of her jean shorts. She sifted through the six badges that were kept in there and singled out Hoenn's Stone and Knuckle Badges.

Thanks for nothing, Dad, the girl thought as she tossed the two small metal objects in a nearby gutter to be washed away eventually. I never wanted to go start a new life.

Terri held her Zephyr Badge up to the lock on her front door with the intent of trying to use its sharp edges to pick the lock. Unexpectedly, the door opened at that very moment, knocking her backwards into the pavement.

A large muscular man burst out of Terri's former house with an armful of various items from newspaper clippings to a notebook. He looked down at the girl on the ground in slight shock, before taking off at a sprint down the street.

"Hey!" Terri shouted, starting to run after him. "What the hell are you doing at my house?"

Rounding the corner by the Department Store, the fleeing man looked back at Terri to find she was gaining on him. Not watching where he was going, he plowed into a large woman exiting the store with several shopping bags.

The man tripped and his hands and knees skidded across the pavement. Terri made a last push to catch up and reached out to grab the thief's shirt. At that same moment, the man picked a pokeball from his belt and released a black wolf-like pokemon.

The Mightyena headbutted Terri in the stomach to halt her progress, and the man used this opportunity to get back up and run. However, Terri was too quick and lunged for the notebook and newspaper clippings. She only got a good hold on the notebook, but it was irrelevant because the man grabbed her around the neck and pushed her up against the wall.

"I think you better give me that back," he smiled cruelly, reaching for the notebook she had held behind her back.

Terri instead grabbed the single pokeball she had and weakly held it up.

"I will release it in the city if you don't let me go," she threatened, trying to squirm away from the bulky man's grip.

There was a tense silence as he contemplated his next move. Terri could just see him thinking of a way to get away with both the notebook and Regigigas. Seeing as Regigigas was the ultimate prize anyway, that seemed to be the more valuable item.

In a swift movement, the thief snapped his hand down to Terri's wrist and took the Master Ball from her hand before she even realized what was happening. In response she drove her knee into his stomach and wrestled out of his hands.

I could go back and try to get away with Regigigas, she thought, but what is it really worth to me? I have my freedom now.

"Stop!" she shouted at the man, who was only a few feet away from her. "You have what you want, and I have what I want. So let's just call it even."

As an extra measure of safety, she took off at full speed toward the pokemon center despite the apparent truce.

*****  
The world was blurry. Vincent groaned as he sat up slowly, trying to clear his head. It appeared he was on some kind of beach. He focused on a series of shapes in front of him. The blue blob was obviously Tentacruel, and he saw there was another person squatting next to him.

"Who are you?" he muttered.

The stranger cleared his throat and stood up. His vision back up to par, Vincent could see a teenage boy in a blue-and-red track suit.

"I'm Jordan, I'm one of the gym trainers here in Petalburg."

Vincent gasped and jumped to his feet to prepare to fight if necessary. He was soon struck with a terrible headache and stumbled backwards only to hear a squeal from the tiny Gulpin he stepped on.

"I'm not on Norman's side," the gym trainer reassured. "Trust me, if I were from Team Aqua, I would have killed you when I found you."

Team Aqua? Vincent's head hurt and he sat back down in the sand. He was tempted to tell the boy to **** off, but didn't really have the energy to. He felt extremely awkward as Jordan sat down right next to him while also dreading the fact that he would probably have to make conversation.

"I thought Team Aqua broke up," Vincent eventually mumbled, looking out to the ocean.

"As you learned today," the gym trainer suppressed a smile, "they are still very much around. After Archie died, Norman just came here from Johto and took his spot both as Gym Leader and head of Team Aqua."

Vincent was still taking all this in, then thinking about what that meant Rowan was doing to oppose Team Aqua. Or did he just know Team Aqua would be a reliable source of information? He was pondering when he suddenly realized that only Tentacruel and Gulpin were on the beach with him.

"Wait," he turned quickly to Jordan. "I had a Zigzagoon with me too. You haven't seen it?"

Jordan flushed and looked away, not sure exactly how to break the news. It had been a truly horrifying sight.

"It... um... oneofNorman'spokemonateit," he said all in one breath. "I'm sorry..."

Vincent's expression turned to shock, then sadness, then an unreadable expression and he looked once again toward the sea. He shook his head slowly. This could not be happening. He never wanted a pokemon's death on his hands. Not to mention he almost died himself. And the worst part was that it was all part of some conspiracy that was way beyond him!

"I need to be alone for a while," he muttered, causing Jordan to respectfully get up and leave the Petalburg Beach area.

The gym trainer looked back with a satisfied expression at Vincent sitting alone on the beach. He was out of earshot by now, and a quick glance the other direction proved the same for Petalburg Gym. He quickly punched a number into his cell phone.

"Roger?" he said upon hearing the other line answer. "It's Jordan in Petalburg City. I have found the means to drive Norman away. Should I do it? … Yes, it's that plan we came up with... No, some other trainer has two, though... Really! YES!... I will definitely do it then... Bye."

Jordan grinned broadly as he walked back out onto Petalburg Beach. Everything seemed to be going so smoothly. Three of the four legendary pokemon were now back under police control, and the last one was going to be easy. He approached Vincent slowly.

"How are you doing?" he asked gently.

The pokemon trainer looked at him and stood up.

"I'll be fine," he shrugged. "It's not like that doesn't happen to a couple pokemon every year around the world. It just comes with pokemon training, I guess."

"You know, Team Aqua is really dangerous," Jordan pressed cautiously.

Taking the silence that followed as a sign to continue, the gym trainer said, "People get killed every day because of what they do, what they're after. But the international police are winning now. This is the time to force Norman into action, because he will learn that his cause is lost."

The confused expression on Vincent's face dissolved as he finally made the connections.

"Team Aqua was after the Regi pokemon, so you hired Rowan," he said with a slight question in his voice so as to get a response.

Jordan nodded, pleased to find the two of them on the same page. He, after all, had been the one to let Rowan and Vincent in the back door of Petalburg Gym so they could catch Norman off guard.

"We have Regice, Regirock, and Registeel, and Team Aqua has nothing. They can't possibly stand up to us. I say we take action now while they are weak."

Vincent was glad to have found himself on the right side for once. It all seemed so clear when Jordan explained everything. He found himself following the undercover police officer back into town to the Petalburg Gym.

"Have your Tentacruel spray down the sides of the building with a weak Sludge Bomb," Jordan instructed, "and your Gulpin can use Poison Gas around the whole perimeter."

The building had no windows to allow for some strategy the gym leader used, so Vincent and his two poison pokemon were able to complete their tasks with no chance at all of being discovered. He stood back to admire their work and the sight of the walls dripping with slime and the general toxic haze that had enveleoped the area looked impressive. He made a mental note to catch more poison types at some point.

Jordan led them back to what he explained was a "safe distance" before sending out one of his own pokemon. A purple balloon-like pokemon floated lazily in the air as it waited for a command.

"Drifblim, use your Will-O-Wisp attack."

The pokemon made a humming noise as it formed a ball of blue fire in front of its body. Then with a shout of "Blim!" the fireball shot forward toward Petalburg Gym. The instant the fire touched the combustible gas, it exploded into a ring of fire around the entire building. The sludge easily caught fire as well, and the whole thing was up in flames in seconds.

Vincent stared in horror at the clouds of black smoke drifting into the air. What have I done? he thought.

"Of course Norman will get out," Jordan said as if reading Vincent's mind. "Being Team Aqua, he has several water pokemon."

"But what about the gym trainers?"

Jordan paused for a moment.

"Collateral damage," he said flatly.

*****

END CHAPTER SEVEN

I don't know... it kind of seems like there's too much going on in this chapter... but I tried to put in some "HOLY CRAP ACTION" moments.

So tell me what you think! Did I go overboard with side-plot-type-things?


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